Tumgik
#subversion
tentacion3099 · 1 day
Text
Tumblr media
27 notes · View notes
thefloralmenace · 3 months
Text
Sometimes the answer is to subvert the rule instead of breaking it.
Anarchy post #5 or something - enough of you have been super sweet about being inspired and hopeful in the tags of my other posts that you've encouraged me to share more of my personal ideology.
So there are good and bad rules out there, and I have a personal analysis I go through to make that determination for myself:
Does the rule achieve its intent?
Is the rule enforceable?
Does the rule disproportionately affect certain people?
Does the rule cause people unreasonable/unnecessary stress?
A good rule is "Yes," "Yes," "No," and "No" - any deviation from that suggests the rule should be ignored, modified, or abolished, but you won't always (or often) have the ability/power to do that. If you've encountered a bad rule, you can decide to break it or take the path of trying to convince the relevant authority to amend or remove the rule, but there is a third option! You can subvert the rule.
I'll give you a quick example of a good rule: You need to wear safety goggles when working with power tools in the woodshop. What is the rule trying to achieve? It's trying to keep you safe in the event of an accident. Does wearing safety goggles help protect your eyes? Yes. Is the rule enforceable? Yeah, if you're the woodshop manager, you can easily walk around and see if someone isn't wearing goggles and ask them to either put them on or step out of the shop. Does this rule disproportionately affect certain people? No, anyone who is able to use power tools should also be able to wear safety goggles. They make ones that go over glasses too. Does this cause unreasonable/unnecessary stress? As long as you keep some spares on hand for people to use (which pretty much every woodshop does), no one should be stressed by this. Good rule.
Now here's an example of a rule that I determined to be bad and what I did about it: My college science department has a policy that if you don't show up appropriately dressed for lab (i.e. long pants, lab coat, goggles, and close-toed shoes) and can't change and get back within 20 minutes of the lab start time, you will get a zero for that lab. There are only 10 labs per year, so that's kind of a big deal. Issue: People often just forget they have lab in the afternoon, especially during the hot months and come to lab in shorts. They rarely forget to bring their lab coat and goggles or wear close-toed shoes, but people frequently forget about long pants. What does this rule seek to achieve? Making sure everyone comes dressed properly for lab. Does it achieve this? Nope. You can't disincentivize forgetting, so no matter how extreme the punishment is, students will forget from time to time. You can't punish forgetfulness out of a person. Is the rule enforceable? Yeah, people do get turned away from lab if they're not wearing long pants. Does it disproportionately affect a certain group of people? Yep! Students who live off campus have no hope of getting changed and getting back in 20 minutes, but people living in the dorms across the street can. Does the rule cause unecessary stress?Yep! People used to regularly cry, panic, and beg to trade pants with someone in the big college group chats to avoid getting a zero for lab.
My solution: Take away the rule's power to stress people by accommodating instead of punishing. I got six pairs of pants in sizes XS to 3XL, wrote "Emergency Lab Pants" on the thighs, and established a box for them in the student common area that anyone could borrow from. This helps people get to lab safely dressed and it provides a safety net that removes the stress of making an easy human mistake.
The reason I went that route was because 1) Breaking the rule and getting away with it was basically impossible and also unsafe. 2) I figured arguing with the department about the policy wouldn't get anywhere. They'd just ignore that you literally can't disincentivize forgetting things and go on about people needing to learn to be responsible for themselves or whatever.
And something interesting happened: the department got completely behind this project. They realized it decreased lab absences and provided a change of clothes if someone spilled something on themselves during the lab. Professors put the Emergency Lab Pants box in their syllabi, and the department invested in another set to be kept on hand in the lab offices.
So even though that very harsh rule still exists, it has been divested of its ability to cause people stress and panic - all because somebody analyzed the rule for the first time and determined that it stressed people out while failing to achieve its goal.
11K notes · View notes
jareckiworld · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media
Joe Mangrum — Grid Subversion (colored sand & acrylic on shaped wood panel, 2017)
249 notes · View notes
physalian · 1 month
Text
How to Subvert Expectations Without Compromising The Story
Whoo boy, is this a contentious topic with the last few blockbuster franchises. To “subvert expectations” is to do the opposite of whatever your audience expects to happen. Your audience expects the story to go a certain way based on the archetypes and tropes your characters follow, the tone you’ve set for your story, and the level of mature themes that tone allows.
It might mean your long-lost princess doesn’t actually reclaim the throne she’s been fighting for. Or the presumed hero (or any of their straight friends) of the story dies halfway through their arcs. The mentor pegged for death actually survives to the end credits. The villain’s plan actually succeeds, or the heroes fail to deactivate the bomb before it explodes. The “will they/won’t they” is never fulfilled.
Supporters of SE argue the following:
It’s refreshing, novel, new, a fun twist on a classic tale
They like that it’s unpredictable and bold
They’re tired of stories fitting within the same wheel ruts of every other story that came before and like to see creativity thrive
It gives audiences something they didn’t even know they wanted
Haters of SE argue this:
It’s only done for drama at the cost of fulfilling character arcs
It’s a cheap gag that only works once and has zero rewatchability with the same impact
Tropes and archetypes have stood the test of time for a reason - to entertain
Plot holes ensue
When expectations are subverted and the story changes in a more positive light (like a beloved character who doesn’t die when we all think they will), the reaction is not nearly as emotionally charged as when the story changes negatively. Thus, the haters have plenty of evidence of bad examples, but minimize the good ones. Good SE is novel, or a pleasant surprise, or a quaint relief. Bad SE trashes the story and spits on the fans and destroys the legacy of the fandom.
What makes a bad subversion?
Like killing any character for shock value, bad SE takes all of the potential of a good story and gambles it for a string of gasps in the movie theater. It exists only to keep the audience on their toes, or because the writer went out of their way to change the direction of their work when fans figured out the mystery too quickly and now *must* prove all the clever sleuths wrong.
So, say your subversion is making the hero lose a tournament arc when they made it all the way to the final round and the entire story is riding on this victory. They may have stumbled along the way and had some near-misses, but they must win. Not just so the audience cheers, but because this is the direction their arc must take to be at all entertaining and fulfilling.
Then they lose, because it’s *novel* and irreparable consequences are reaped in the aftermath. They lose when, by rights, they were either stronger or smarter or faster than their opponent. They lose when the hand of the author rigs the fight against them and everyone notices.
Sure, it’s not at all what audiences expect, but you, writer, your first responsibility to the people consuming your content is to entertain them. So what purpose does this loss serve this character? How does it impact their arc, the themes that surround them, the message of your story?
Even if mainstream audiences don’t care on the surface about themes and motifs, they still know when a story fumbles. It’s not entertaining anymore, it’s not satisfying. Yes, crap happens in reality, but this is fiction. If I wanted to read about some tragic hero’s bitter and unsatisfying demise, I’d read about any losing side in any war ever in a history book. I picked up a fiction book for catharsis.
On the topic of “gritty fantasy/sci-fi anyone can die and no one is safe” – no author has the guts to roll the dice and kill whoever it lands on. Some characters will always have plot armor. Why? Because you wouldn’t have a story otherwise, you’d just have a bloody, gory, depressing reality TV show with hidden cameras.
What makes a good subversion?
Now. What if this character loses the final round of their tournament, but it’s their own fault? Maybe they get too cocky. Maybe it’s perfectly, tragically in character for them to fall on their own sword. Maybe the audience is already primed with the knowledge that this fight will be close, that there might be foul play involved, but still deny that it will happen because that’s the hero, they won’t lose. Until they do.
Then, it’s not the hand of the author, it’s this character’s flaws finally biting them in the ass. It’s still disappointing, no doubt, but then the audience is less mad at the author and more mad at the dumbass character for letting their ego get to their head.
If you write a character who’s entire goal in life is to win that trophy, or reclaim their throne, or get the girl, and they *don’t* do those things, then the “trophy” had better be the friends they made along the way, that they learned it wasn’t the trophy, it was something *better* and even though they lost, they still won. Even when expectations are shredded, the story still has to say something, otherwise the audience just feels like they wasted their time.
A good subversion does not compromise the soul of the narrative. You might kill a fan favorite character or even the hero of the story, but their impact on the characters they leave behind is felt until the very end. The hero might lose her tournament, but she still walks away with wisdom, maturity, and new friends. Heck, sports movies leave the winner of the big game a toss-up more often than not. Audiences know the game is important, but they know the character they’re following is even more important. Doesn’t matter if the *team* loses the battle, so long as the protagonist wins the Character Development war.
Good SE that should be more popular:
The “Trial of threes” – your hero faces three obstacles and usually botches the first two and succeeds on the third attempt. Subvert it by having them win on the first or second, lose all three, or have a secret fourth
Not killing your gays. Just. Don’t do it. That’ll subvert expectations just fine, won’t it?
Let the villain win
Have your hero’s love interest not actually interested in them because they realize they deserve better / Have the hero realize they don’t want the romantic subplot they thought they did
Have the love triangle become a polycule / have the two warring love interests get with each other instead, or both find someone they don’t have to compete for
Mid-redemption villain backslides at the Worst Moment Possible
Hero doesn’t actually have all the MacGuffins necessary at the Worst Moment Possible
Hero is simply wrong, about anything, about important things, about themselves
The character who knows too much still can’t warn their friends in time, but lives instead with the guilt of their failure
The mentor lives and becomes a bitter rival out to maintain their spot at the top of the charts
Kill the hero, and make the villain Regret Everything
More deadbeat missing parents, not just dead parents
Let the hero live long enough to become the villain
Why write a crown prince that never becomes king? What’s the point of his story if all he does is remain exactly who he was on page 1 and learns nothing for his efforts? Why write a rookie racer if he spins out in the infield in the big race and ends his story broken and demoralized in a hospital bed? Why should we, the audience, spend time and emotional investment on a story that goes nowhere and says nothing?
Cinderella always gets a happy ending no matter how many iterations her story gets, because she wouldn’t be Cinerella if she remained an abused orphan with no friends. We like predictability, we like puzzling out where we think the story will go based on the crumbs of evidence we pick up along the way, we like interacting with our fiction and patting ourselves on the back when we’re proven right.
Tragedies exist. There’s seven types of stories and the fall from grace is one of them… but audiences can see a tragedy coming from a mile away. Audiences sign up for a tragedy when they pay for the movie ticket. We know, no matter how much we root for that character to make better choices, that their future is doomed. Tragedy is still cathartic.
What’s not cathartic is being bait-and-switched by a writer who laughs and snaps pictures of our horrified faces just so they can say they proved us wrong. Congratulations? Go ahead and write the rookie broken in the hospital bed. I can’t stop you. Just don’t be shocked when no one wants to watch your misery parade march on by.
106 notes · View notes
reality-detective · 4 months
Text
What is the process of subversion? 🤔
93 notes · View notes
omnybus · 1 year
Text
One thing I like about Izutsumi from Dungeon Meshi is that while she certainly counts as a "Catgirl", she's not some cutesy, easily fetishized, nyah-welcome-home-master kind of catgirl. Hell, she doesn't even have giant tits, or even moderately-sized tits.
But she does display a lot of traits similar to cats: aside from some catlike mannerisms like purring or landing on her feet, she's pretty stand-offish, and comes off as self-centered and even rude at first glance, often bluntly stating how she feels about something. She prefers solitude, coming and going as she pleases. Still, she eventually warms up to others' company (usually after food is offered), and even then it's almost entirely on her own terms. Eventually we see that Izutsumi can be passionate and caring about others, just not in an outward manner. She's probably the most cat-like catgirl ever
463 notes · View notes
agentrouka-blog · 19 days
Note
Do you agree that when Martin write characters thinking something will never happen or can't happen it's actually a hint that this thing will happen ? For example when Sansa thinks she'll never see Jon again it's a hint that she will in fact reunite with him in the future.
Hi there!
I wouldn't call it a universal rule, because I certainly don't think that Dany will ever have a living child, even though the subject is given the "never" treatment so much that many readers expect it to be subverted. Thematically, it makes sense for this prediction to be true. GRRM is showing us how Dany stands in conflict with the concept of motherhood all the time. The repetition of this line tells us something about her relationship with this conflict, but it's not introducing a dramatic irony.
But that Sansa quote in particular? Or "No one will ever marry me for love"? They make sense for Sansa from her POV but there is no reason to expect them to reflect the truth. Not only is the desire for love - and her subsequent disillusionment - a big theme in her story, it's also heavily hinted to continue to play a role in her future since it represents the climactic point of her conversation with Cersei after her flowering. ("Everybody wants to be loved." / "Love is a poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.") She no longer expects to be loved but the subject keeps popping up. GRRM is doing that for a reason.
In the same vein, why would GRRM bring up the idea of Sansa never seeing Jon again? It's never been a pressing concern for either of them before this moment. There is no point to this particular "never", unless he wants to subvert it. To bring it up introduces the thought of their meeting again in the first place. There can be no clearer hint that this is setting up a future event.
26 notes · View notes
twopoppies · 1 year
Note
https://twitter.com/kmmwkindness_/status/1636463202476105748?t=KYJGdvxhRw6B_zt8560QDg&s=19
Huh?? Why would he say that 😂💀
LOUIS’ SMILE AND LOOK INTO THE CAMERA AT THE END. I AM SCREAMING 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Tumblr media
x
216 notes · View notes
hauntedbystorytelling · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media
Daisies (Czech: Sedmikrásky, 1966) · Film stills from the first scene
Tumblr media
Sunbathing at an outdoor pool, Marie I (brunette) and Marie II (blonde) come to the conclusion that the world is spoiled. It’s a short leap to deciding they are spoiled too, but “so what?”. From that moment on, they run riot. | src Berlinale 2023
Tumblr media
Daisies (Czech: Sedmikrásky) is a 1966 Czechoslovakian Surrealist dramatic comedy written and directed by Věra Chytilová regarded as a milestone of the Czechoslovak New Wave movement.
view and read more on wordPress
60 notes · View notes
eelhound · 2 months
Text
"It doesn’t have to be the way it is is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to 'being real.' Yet it is a subversive statement.
Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that things are as they have to be. Fantasy not only asks 'What if things didn’t go on just as they do?' but demonstrates what they might be like if they went otherwise — thus gnawing at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are.
So here imagination and fundamentalism come into conflict.
A fully created imaginary world is a mental construct similar in many respects to a religious or other cosmology. This similarity, if noticed, can be deeply disturbing to the orthodox mind.
When a fundamental belief is threatened the response is likely to be angry or dismissive — either 'Abomination!' or 'Nonsense!' Fantasy gets the abomination treatment from religious fundamentalists, whose rigid reality-constructs shudder at contact with question, and the nonsense treatment from pragmatic fundamentalists, who want to restrict reality to the immediately perceptible and the immediately profitable. All fundamentalisms set strict limits to the uses of imagination, outside which the fundamentalist’s imagination itself runs riot, fancying dreadful deserts where God and Reason and the capitalist way of life are lost, forests of the night where tigers hang from trees by the tail, lighting the way to madness with their bright burning.
Those who dismiss fantasy less fiercely, from a less absolutist stance, usually call it dreaming, or escapism.
Dream and fantastic literature are related only on a very deep, usually inaccessible level of the mind. Dream is free of intellectual control; its narratives are irrational and unstable, and its aesthetic value is mostly accidental. Fantastic literature, like all the verbal arts, must satisfy the intellectual as well as the aesthetic faculty. Fantasy, odd as it sounds to say so, is a perfectly rational undertaking.
As for the charge of escapism, what does 'escape' mean? Escape from real life, responsibility, order, duty, piety, is what the charge implies. But nobody, except the most criminally irresponsible or pitifully incompetent, escapes to jail. The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is 'escapism' an accusation of?
'Why are things as they are? Must they be as they are? What might they be like if they were otherwise?' To ask these questions is to admit the contingency of reality, or at least to allow that our perception of reality may be incomplete, our interpretation of it arbitrary or mistaken.
I know that to philosophers what I’m saying is childishly naive, but my mind cannot or will not follow philosophical argument, so I must remain naive. To an ordinary mind not trained in philosophy, the question — do things have to be the way they are / the way they are here and now / the way I’ve been told they are? — may be an important one. To open a door that has been kept closed is an important act.
Upholders and defenders of a status quo, political, social, economic, religious, or literary, may denigrate or diabolize or dismiss imaginative literature, because it is — more than any other kind of writing — subversive by nature. It has proved, over many centuries, a useful instrument of resistance to oppression.
Yet as Chesterton pointed out, fantasy stops short of nihilist violence, of destroying all the laws and burning all the boats. (Like Tolkien, Chesterton was an imaginative writer and a practicing Catholic, and thus perhaps particularly aware of tensions and boundaries.) Two and one make three. Two of the brothers fail the quest, the third carries it through. Action is met with reaction. Fate, Luck, Necessity are as inexorable in Middle-earth as in Colonus or South Dakota. The fantasy tale begins here and ends there (or back here), where the subtle and ineluctable obligations and responsibilities of narrative art have taken it. Down on the bedrock, things are as they have to be. It’s only everywhere above the bedrock that nothing has to be the way it is.
There really is nothing to fear in fantasy unless you are afraid of the freedom of uncertainty. This is why it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who likes science can dislike fantasy. Both are based so profoundly on the admission of uncertainty, the welcoming acceptance of unanswered questions. Of course the scientist seeks to ask how things are the way they are, not to imagine how they might be otherwise. But are the two operations opposed, or related? We can’t question reality directly, only by questioning our conventions, our belief, our orthodoxy, our construction of reality. All Galileo said, all Darwin said, was, 'It doesn’t have to be the way we thought it was.'"
- Ursula K. Le Guin, from her blog entry "It Doesn’t Have To Be the Way It Is," June 2011.
30 notes · View notes
headache-central · 7 months
Text
I read Hot Fuzz not as copaganda but as a rather overt condemnation of the vigilante cop trope and the very messed up damage people can inflict on an entire community when given unlimited authority.
The whole "break a bunch of laws for the greater good" thing is explicitly stabbed at, mocked and ultimately condemned as the central villains are revealed to have the pettiest motives for murdering random people.
The police chief was like Dirty Harry on steroids with a bloody cult on his side that needn't be held accountable for anything.
The main character Nicholas Angel grew up feeling lied to about people's supposed noble intentions, and lies were what kept true justice at bay in Sandford until an abused, neglected son decided to hold his dad accountable regardless of the consequences for himself.
Parental abuse, country bigotry, purposeful deceit and misdirection by authority figures, blind hatred and the impulses that followed.
These are not subtly hinted at, these are front and centre in Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz.
To think it was a film from 2007, too.
Also David Bradley was funny as hell.
Tumblr media
35 notes · View notes
tentacion3099 · 5 months
Text
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele on the USA decay.
392 notes · View notes
r-666 · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Let go, feel all sense of identity drain away at Master’s touch, becoming Master’s object
80 notes · View notes
jareckiworld · 10 months
Photo
Tumblr media
Siegmund Schneider — Subversion  (oil on linen canvas, 2019)
59 notes · View notes
mask131 · 4 days
Text
French fantasy review: Les flammes de la nuit
I do wonder why I make these posts – about French novels that I do not think were translated in English, reviewing them in English on an English-speaking website… I do know that some French people are lurking around under a mask of Englishness, but still, most people here are those that I guess will never have access to the novels I review… But oh well, I’ll do what I’ll do, as bizarre as it may sound: and what I’ll do is talk about the French fantasy.
I already translated a long time ago some articles written about the French fantasy literature, but here I will share my personal thoughts and favorites when it comes to this genre of fantasy that is considered “foreign” and “exotic” by the simple virtue of… not being written in English. France is the land of literature, and has already bred, nursed and thoroughly exploited and theorized the two genres that gave birth to the fantasy and yet are so hard to translate in English: the merveilleux of fables and epics, the fantastique of 19th century supernatural tales… Why wouldn’t France have fantasy too? The name of the genre stays English, unfortunately, but it has enough echoes and roots within our own féeries and surnaturel to find a place prepared for it since centuries…
Anyway, enough lyrical: let’s get into the meat of the subject, let’s dig to the bone, and I want to begin with “Les flammes de la nuit” (The flames of the night) by Michel Pagel.
Tumblr media
When I picked up this book I was not expecting anything precisely from it, I was just curious. I had only ever heard of Michel Pagel through a huge and dark series of his called “La Comédie Inhumaine” that everybody loved and that was renowned as a dark and violent fantastique, but I never read it. The reason I picked up this book was due to its relationship with fairytales. If you do not know I am REALLY into fairytale stuff, I even have an entire sideblog just to talk about fairytales ( @adarkrainbow ). And this novel was advertised as being a fairytale subversion, so I thought, let’s get into it! [EDIT: I actually also had heard of Michel Pagel through another work of his that now I will definitively read, Le Roi d’Août, a supernatural historical novel that faithfully retells the biography of the king Philippe Auguste… While filling some historical blanks in his life by the intervention and encounter of the supernatural folks hiding within the French landscape.]
Most notably, when I checked briefly online reviews to see if I should get the book, all agreed on a same thing: all said that the book was absolutely great, with wonderful ideas and powerful characters… until the very end which had disappointed everybody (at least at the time the reviews were made, so by the 2000s/early 2010s). As a result I went into this novel saying to myself “Okay, the beginning and middle will be great, the end will be bad, get ready”. And… what a surprise! The ending was not bad at all. A bit confused and rushed but… it was a good ending. Or rather a fitting ending (because it is not a happy or positive one, nor is it a negative one – it is a grandiose, tragic, bittersweet but hopeful ending perfect for the tone of the novel and the project the author set upon himself). If you ask me, all the reviews were wrong – and I had been deceived for the best, since the novel surpassed what I was expecting. Now, I won’t throw the stone, I actually understand why these readers were disappointed with the ending and I’ll explain why (spoiler: it is a question of context and point of view). For now, I’ll simply say that I greatly love this novel which definitively goes into my top French fantasy novels.
Tumblr media
In terms of editions and publications, a few indications… This is one of those typical edition thingies that are so peculiar to France. The novel was originally published as a series of novellas. Four in total, between 1985 and 1987, in the “Anticipations” collection of the Fleuve Noir publishing house (it was still in this era where in France fantasy and sci-fi were sold together as one and the same). Later, the four novellas were collected into one full volume, one novel divided into four parts. This complete volume was published in 2000 (in a small format by the J’ai Lu Poche Fantasy, in a large format by Denoël collection Lunes d'encre), and it is both the version I read and the one most people refer to when talking about “Les flammes de la nuit”. I do not know if the text was edited or slightly rewritten for this new format – I don’t think so, but I have to admit the text felt so much like an early 2000s story I was quite surprised it came from the mid-80s… There’s quite notably the fact the main character is openly bisexual, but hey, the 80s in France were quite a time too… More recently in 2014 Les Moutons Electrique republished the integral in a large format, and then in 2022 in a middle format, proving this novel’s great and enduring success.
 [Note: As I am writing this post I made a quick checklist and I just discovered that Michel Pagel actually was the French translator of Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys and American Gods, as well as of Gary Gygax’s Monster Manual for D&D… Wow, that was a total surprise – and it does explain some things, I notably see how Neil Gaiman’s writing could have had an influence over this novel…]
Let me briefly set you in the mood the very first pages plunge the reader into… We follow an old man who is travelling on a pilgrimage to a great lake at the center of a medieval kingdom name Fuinör. He isn’t just any old man: it is but one of his masks. He is the Enchanter, a great and powerful wizard as old as the universe itself, a supernatural being known to take many forms, and who can be as much a wild animal of omens as a seducing woman luring knights to an uncertain doom… Once he reaches the great lake, called the Mirror for its still waters form the perfect reflection of the sky and the sun above it, in a great burst of light, the sun disappears… and reappears. But the sun is not golden anymore: it is green. And with the sun everything changed color within Fuinör: the sky is not blue but indigo, the sea is the color of emerald, the trees have blue leaves, human skin is orange… And this is perfectly normal, for in the world of Fuinör, every seven years the sun is reborn above the lake, turning into a different color, and with it everything in the world also changes its hue. And as such, seven year by seven year, the light goes through all the seven colors of the rainbow…
This sets the stage for what “Les flammes de la nuit” is. And it is many, many things, a story which likes the sun of Fuinör undergoes different stages and tones (the serial publication helps this feeling of slow transition and evolution throughout the novel).
Tumblr media
The story opens as an open, cynical and dark parody of fairytales – for the world of Fuinör is a world of stock fairytales. It is a world in which, when the king has a daughter, seven fairies, each for each color of the rainbow, arrive to bless her with all the usual gifts – beauty, grace, singing – while carefully avoiding anything like strength or intelligence, for these are male gifts for those destined to rule. It is a world in which, when the queen gives an heir to her king (and there is always only one king and one queen), she must die in labor – and if she happens to survive… then the royal doctor must prepare a certain powder to make sure the queen respects the tradition. It is a world where barons often declare themselves vile rebels and wicked usurpers and try to overthrow the high king… but they are always defeated because the law claims there can only be one rebellion at a time, and each baron must warn in advance the king and let him decide how, when and where he wants to do the battle. It is a world where there is a land for each thing – quite literally. Fuinör is divided into different “countries” each dedicated to a specific area: there is a land of Hunting, where the hunts take place, and any hunting elsewhere is outlawed. There is a land for War, and nobody would ever think of waging war elsewhere than there. There is a land for Love, and all love and romance and sex can only take place within its boundaries. Such as the laws, and the customs, and the traditions, and they have always been since the beginning of time…
Fuinör is a mix of all the classical fairytales and the traditional medieval romance and Arthurian tales – but all taken to an extreme. Fuinör is a world stuck in an endless cycle of loops, where the events all repeat themselves in the same way with predictable end, where everyone is given a specific role and fate since birth, where everything is stuck under an order that has been decided by ominous gods a long time ago, and where no surprise and no disorder can ever happen. The brave knights in shining armor always win the heart of princesses, the high king is always victorious of anyone that tries to take his throne – and if someone ever does, THEY are the rightful high king and the other is the usurper – and the peasants… well who cares, they don’t count, they’re not even considered human, they are just here to work and be background props.
But things will change… Things will change thanks to the Enchanter, who decides that when the new princess of the kingdom is born, little Rowena, she shall receive a gift no other princess ever received… the gift of intelligence. An intelligence that will allow her to understand the absurd logic of her world, and use the sclerosis of archetypes and the rigidity of millennia-old customs to her advantage. An intelligence that will make her greater and more powerful than anyone – an intelligence that will threaten the very existence of Fuinör… Thus is the beginning of “Les Flammes de la Nuit”.
Tumblr media
The beginning of the novel, Rowena’s own youth and story, is clearly designed to deconstruct all the archetypes, stereotypes and point out all the bad side of both the generic fairytale (especially Disney’s version of fairytales – the novel is filled with jabs at Disney and the “Americanized” fairytale, the seven fairies being basically Disney’s fairy godmothers mixed with Glinda from The Wizard of Oz MGM movie) and of the Arthurian romance as we know it today. It does not mean Michel Pagel hates those genres, quite the contrary! This book heavily pays homage to both domain, in which Pagel has clearly a great interest. In fact, this book is much more “medieval romance/Arthurian epic” than fairytale in tone, and while anybody who saw the Disney movies or read Perrault will get the fairytale references, I do believe someone with zero knowledge of the Arthuriana will miss a LOT of cultural jokes and clever references in this text. From the get go the Enchanter is clearly supposed to be inspired by Merlin from the Arthurian myth – but not the Disneyified, Americanized Merlin. The original Merlin, Myrddinn, the mythical, legendary, ambiguous and terrifying entity that exists beyond shapes and times and manipulates fate as he pleases… In a similar way, if you haven’t done any research on the evolution of the legend of Avalon you won’t get how twisted and cool the climax within the domain of the Fairies is… But I won’t reveal too much spoilers.
But loving doesn’t mean being uncritical, and this book is clearly the result of Michel Pagel thinking about what he adores, and highlighting in an entertaining way all that is wrong with those classical tales. The first part of the story is centered around Rowena, this intelligent and daring girl born within a world of the worst fairytale stereotypes and outdated medieval chivalry. And as she grows up she gets to explore what others were too afraid to explore, she understands what nobody understood, she gains power nobody had access to before… all the while suffering from what her world really is: unfair, classicist, sexist, misogynistic and abusive. And this begins already the bittersweet tone of the novel. At the same time we have a very funny parody that enjoys dark humor and plays all the code of the traditional “fractured fairytale”, and yet it alternates with very sad and dark moments where Rowena is confronted with the cruelties of such a universe and understands why being an intelligent girl in a world where women are to be submissive and stupid can be dangerous. But all is in fact set and prepared for her own fate, prepared by the Enchanter in person: for Rowena will become… the Witch.
And of course I love this, because who doesn’t get to love a dark retelling of fairytales, who doesn’t like a faithful retelling of medieval epics with an acute sense of modern values clashing with outdated morals, who doesn’t get to love the story of how a girl became a witch-queen? But… I think this is where the “fracture” with a certain part of the audience happened. I will return to the reviews I talked about above: many people thought the ending was worthless or were betrayed by it. Having read the novel I understand why they felt that: in their own words, they were sold and expected a feminist retelling of fairytales about breaking conventions and stereotypes. They were sold the story of a girl being a hero, and the old fairytale clichés being mercilessly mocked and denounced and beaten upon. And that was it for them. As such, yes, the ending probably disappointed them… Because it isn’t what the story is about.
It is made clear in the beginning of the story: being a Witch is not a pleasant thing. It is not a power fantasy. It might look like it, and Rowena uses it as such, but we are clearly warned that a Witch is still an unpleasant, dangerous and sometimes disgusting existence which will require suffering, both inflicted by the Witch and received by her. It is in such a path Rowena sets herself upon – and this is part of a greater scope of things. Rowena is the main character of the novel, but she is part of a wider plot by the Enchanter. The Enchanter wants to break the endless, frozen cycle of Fuinör. He wants to destroy those paralyzing traditions and this unnatural order. He wants to plunge back the world into chaos – a benevolent, needed, positive chaos, but a chaos still. And one of the very strong messages of this tale is: a need to go beyond Manicheism. To go beyond simplistic duality or archetypal characters. What Rowena, and the Enchanter, and others later, bring is complexity. The entire point of the novel is to go beyond the idea that there is all good and all bad, clear cut good and evil, black and white. As such, slowly as the cosmic battle wages on, as the Tradition and the Divine Law unravel, the characters grow into shades of gray as all their values, their positions and their allegiances are redefined, put to test or exposed, as the very machine of the universe starts to be pulled apart. Characters that start out as nice and lovable heroes turn into selfish villains. Characters that appear as flawed jerks and unsympathetic narrators learn from their mistake and grow heroic and wise. Courageous warriors grow into cowards, figures of sanity become mad, and this entire novel is the story of one huge revolution where everything changes: moralities, social hierarchies, laws of justice, and even genders! (The novel notably features an exploration of non-binary genders through one specific character – or three depending on how you count it – not including the various shapeshifting of the supernatural entities, which again helps make it resonate with a modern audience despite being around for quite a long time)
As such, no, this story is not a feminist power fantasy, and those that go in expecting this will be disappointed. It is a much, much larger and complex story about an entire world, about this fictional place born out of the classic fairytales and the medieval romances and the Arthuriana, and how this thing is confronted with its own choice of “evolve or die”. And this is still a very powerful and admirable story, which at the same plays subverts tropes, while also playing many clichés and stereotypes straight, but with a clear knowledge of this. Some people in the reviews said they were disappointed that ultimately, it seemed that Michel Pagel, in trying to break down and denounce clichés, ended up himself reasserting those same clichés. And I honestly do not think it is the case – as the novel is rather a strong defense of “We should get rid of all clichés and stereotypes, because they’re always going to trap us, no matter on which side they are”. But again, I can’t reveal too much without spoiling this long modern epic.
Tumblr media
A good example of why for example this novel isn’t a pure “feminist fantasy” as many believed: Rowena is not the only main character. There’s another one, a “male counterpart” so to speak of the Witch-Queen in training. A character who doesn’t really have a name (well he has one but it is kind of a spoiler domain), and whose own backstory forms the second part of the novel (or the second novella of the series). A character who lives in a different part of Fuinör, and also should have been trapped in a cycle of millennia-old rituals and binding traditions and unfair customs, but whose fate changes completely due to the interventions of the Witch and the Enchanter… Except that, whereas with Rowena we had a bittersweet parody of Disney movies and traditional fairytales, with this second character we rather explore a deconstruction and attack of a different type of folktales. There is notably a brutal takedown of the whole “Journey of the Hero” system and the “Monomyth” idea. And I don’t say “brutal” lightly: this part of the novel is very, very brutal, physically speaking. Because this second main character is the helpful companion on the road in fairytales that helps the hero get the girl while himself having nothing. He is also the stock archetype of the Fool doomed to make mistakes and be ridiculed or punished. And he is the False Pretender, the False Hero of fairytales here to put in value the True Hero… Except we are told the story through his point of view. Except he is not evil, he is a guy who is trying his best but is put in an unfair position and only gets endless bullying. Except the True Hero doesn’t seem to be deserving of his position, and the question is raised of “Maybe the other guy should have been the Hero”… But here we shift into a fantasy version of what Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” was and we fully explore the magical dystopia that is Fuinör.
Overall I do have to say… I think so far the closest thing I have seen in terms of overall tone and ambiance, in the English-speaking world, to compare these works… would be Dimension 20’s season “Neverafter”. Both works deal with a very funny parody but also very dark twisting of fairytales and folktales. Both deal with characters being abused and going through horrors at the end of great cosmic powers and otherworldly narrators. Both tread between comedy and horror ; and both deal with the protagonists’ attempt at breaking endless cycles set upon by fairies (because, in both Pagel’s novel and Dimension 20, the fairies are one of the numerous antagonists as the ruthless and terrifying enforcers of the “laws of fairytales” that get everybody stuck in their roles and functions). Of course, the two works are very different beyond that… But there is a common bone.
A final element I need to add so that you get a full understanding of this novel: Michel Pagel placed his book under the patronage of Shakespeare. And if the fact every part opens with a quote from one of Shakespeare’s play, from Hamlet to Macbeth passing by Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and more, wasn’t enough, anyone versed in Shakespearian studies will see how among the many archetypes and stock tropes of the novel, those of Shakespeare also regularly pop up. Someone once wrote that this novel started out as a fairytale parody, but slowly evolved into a Shakespearian tragedy, and I cannot agree more. It does start out as a dark and morbid but entertaining parody – and then things get really brutal, really violent, really sad, really serious, and we enter a terrible and dreary fantasy, but still very poetic and very human, that moves towards a universe where all of Shakespeare’s greatest cruelties fit right at home. The novel most notably has a lot, a LOT of fun exploring the Shakespearian archetype of the “Fool”. There’s almost two handfuls of characters that each is meant to explore a different aspect of the Shakespearian Fool, each expressing a difference nuance of it (the famous non-binary character is one of them, paying homage to the typical gender-plays and gender-questioning within Shakespeare’s plays) – and I am glad to be a Shakespeare enjoyer when reading this novel because again, a random person with zero Shakespeare knowledge would miss a lot of things. (Which again is I believe the reason the Internet reviews attacked this novel, there is a certain degree of medieval and literary knowledge needed to get the parts of this novel that pay homage to the older texts and more ancient roots of the clichéd, Disneyified myths we have today… Without it the novel can still be read, but it might seem much weirder and bleaker than it truly is)
Finally a flaw, because there needs to be a flaw in every review, it can’t all be glowing: I do admit that of the four parts composing this novel, the fourth one did felt unbalanced. Notably the author seemed to spend too much time, description and effort on characters barely introduced (which at the ending climax of a story is not good), and not enough on the characters we were following since the very beginning… But I will blame that on the fact the fourth part was originally meant to be an independent novella read one year after the last part was published. I do believe that, while putting the full series in one volume is quite convenient if you want to buy something to read over holidays, it does make one feel a bit tired by the end since you literally absorb four years of writing into one go… So, my advice would be to enjoy this book by making pauses between each part, to not do an “overdose” that would be too abrupt.
Or two flaw, I feel generous: when it comes to the second part, it felt a tad bit repetitive. A tad bit too much repetitive. I get that we are supposed to have a hopeful character that is trying his best to make things work and obtain what he wishes for, and we are supposed to fully get the injustice of the situation and the hardness of this world… But precisely because of how it explores casual violence and vicious brutality, the repetitiveness is felt more. It’s a type of “break the cutie” (who isn’t here so much a “cutie” as a morally neutral human being) scenario, and I am not well placed to say if the author did just enough or too much.
[Edit: I do love how the original covers for the 80s series tried their best to make it seem like a full horror series... when it is not]
Tumblr media
14 notes · View notes
wealmostaneckbeard · 4 months
Text
32 notes · View notes