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kate_nepveuI promised skygiants notes on this panel.
Description:
Alaya Dawn Johnson called Dorothy Dunnett "the literary equivalent of the Velvet Underground": not many people read her, but everyone who did wrote a book. A painter, researcher, and opera lover, she wrote what she wanted to read: epic historical drama. Come learn what our panelists and many other writers learned from Dunnett.
Alex Jablokow, Nisi Shawl, Lila Garrott, Kate Nepveu (mod), Victoria Janssen
This was a loose, engaged panel that was a great deal of fun. I made notes immediately after, but I was very very tired, so take with a grain of salt.
The following contains indiscriminate spoilers for everything but KING HEREAFTER and discussion of racism and consent issues. Though the spoilers are kind of vague because, as I told programming, I only remember the broadest outlines of Lymond, not having read it for 20 years, and was volunteering to moderate mostly to direct traffic. (I did end up reading the first three mysteries for the panel, though, and will booklog them eventually.)
There was a lot of compare-and-contrast between the Lymond [*] and Niccolo books. It was suggested that Niccolo was a deliberate reaction to Lymond in terms of protagonist and politics (Machievelli in the romantic way and then in the brutal realistic way). Not what some people signed up for, which is totally understandable. Also Niccolo even less signposted, plot-wise, than Lymond (credited to Pamela Dean).
[*] Which I called "the Francis books" for the last 3/4 of the panel, because apparently I have been pronouncing it wrong all this time but I couldn't make my mouth do that. (Apparently it's LIE-mond, and I've been saying leh-MOND.)
The mystery novels can also be seen as a reaction to Lymond: they have a new first-person female narrator every book, and they're contemporary, which makes them very different from omniscient historicals with a heavy dude focus! (And lets her pull a Roger Ackroyd.)
(Regardless, they all have intense specificity and sensory detail and amazing action sequences.)
Speaking of POV, it was mentioned that the omni of Lymond is very like the POV of a character of the time period, knowing what that person would be expected to know, sticking to the historical timeline regardless of pacing weirdness. Also the dialogue is not historical, but then-contemporary upper-class Scottish, which was of course still foreign to the panelists. (But Lymond's way of speaking in dense allusions is theoretically possible but really unlikely in terms of having access to all those sources.)
We listed off Lymond-inspired protagonists: Brandon in Smith & Trowbridge's Exordium, James in Freedom and Necessity, Diarmiud in The Fionavar Tapestry, Alec in Swordspoint, Janny Wurts' Arithon (per Usenet back in the day); a Tanith Lee characterwho might be Azhrarn? named Cyrion, see comments. Someone asked about female Lymonds; I credited skygiants with the Code Name Verity link (SPOILERS), and someone suggested the Duchess in The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Also, though a dude, C.S. Pascat's Captive Prince books has Lymond-but-gay.
(An audience member said that Megan Whalen Turner had not read Lymond prior to writing the first three Attolia books!)
Someone said WRT Lymond, "The perfect man for you is a woman," per the delightful Ruoxi Chen on Twitter, and I heard it and I couldn't catch the context even then. But everyone else liked it!
Much discussion of Francis as female id figure, particularly with reference to fanfic sensibilities; vulnerability, opaqueness, competence, general extreme woobie nature (one of my favorite moments was when the panel defined and spelled "woobie" for an older audience member). No-one seemed willing to defend the end of Checkmate as falling on the right side of the drama/melodrama line, however.
Weird and bad shit in Dunnett's works. Racism: constantly naming that a compatriot of Lymond's was A Moor; a non-white character whose name I couldn't catch being described as oily and very sexually threatening toward Lymond; the emphasis on Lymond's overall paleness with regard to his (and Marthe's) beauty; some stunningly gross descriptions in the third mystery book, which is set in the Bahamas, and also Johnson Johnson having to outdo the black characters at everything. Sexuality and consent issues: a grooming-ish plotline in Niccolo; a Lymond character who dies because she has sex; highly weird consent stuff in the mysteries that I'm running out of time so will not go into, but which an audience member suggested may have been of its time (a lot of forcible grabbing in Barbara Cartland novels then).
Honestly I kind of want to reread Lymond now, but there's no way I could reasonably piecemeal them in the time available to me. Especially since someone after the panel convinced me to give Elizabeth Wein's Arthurian books another shot after I was so mad at The Winter Prince, so now that's a whole 'nother series on to the to-be-read list . . .
skygiants notes on this panel. Description:
Alaya Dawn Johnson called Dorothy Dunnett "the literary equivalent of the Velvet Underground": not many people read her, but everyone who did wrote a book. A painter, researcher, and opera lover, she wrote what she wanted to read: epic historical drama. Come learn what our panelists and many other writers learned from Dunnett.
Alex Jablokow, Nisi Shawl, Lila Garrott, Kate Nepveu (mod), Victoria Janssen
This was a loose, engaged panel that was a great deal of fun. I made notes immediately after, but I was very very tired, so take with a grain of salt.
The following contains indiscriminate spoilers for everything but KING HEREAFTER and discussion of racism and consent issues. Though the spoilers are kind of vague because, as I told programming, I only remember the broadest outlines of Lymond, not having read it for 20 years, and was volunteering to moderate mostly to direct traffic. (I did end up reading the first three mysteries for the panel, though, and will booklog them eventually.)
There was a lot of compare-and-contrast between the Lymond [*] and Niccolo books. It was suggested that Niccolo was a deliberate reaction to Lymond in terms of protagonist and politics (Machievelli in the romantic way and then in the brutal realistic way). Not what some people signed up for, which is totally understandable. Also Niccolo even less signposted, plot-wise, than Lymond (credited to Pamela Dean).
[*] Which I called "the Francis books" for the last 3/4 of the panel, because apparently I have been pronouncing it wrong all this time but I couldn't make my mouth do that. (Apparently it's LIE-mond, and I've been saying leh-MOND.)
The mystery novels can also be seen as a reaction to Lymond: they have a new first-person female narrator every book, and they're contemporary, which makes them very different from omniscient historicals with a heavy dude focus! (And lets her pull a Roger Ackroyd.)
(Regardless, they all have intense specificity and sensory detail and amazing action sequences.)
Speaking of POV, it was mentioned that the omni of Lymond is very like the POV of a character of the time period, knowing what that person would be expected to know, sticking to the historical timeline regardless of pacing weirdness. Also the dialogue is not historical, but then-contemporary upper-class Scottish, which was of course still foreign to the panelists. (But Lymond's way of speaking in dense allusions is theoretically possible but really unlikely in terms of having access to all those sources.)
We listed off Lymond-inspired protagonists: Brandon in Smith & Trowbridge's Exordium, James in Freedom and Necessity, Diarmiud in The Fionavar Tapestry, Alec in Swordspoint, Janny Wurts' Arithon (per Usenet back in the day); a Tanith Lee character
skygiants with the Code Name Verity link (SPOILERS), and someone suggested the Duchess in The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Also, though a dude, C.S. Pascat's Captive Prince books has Lymond-but-gay.(An audience member said that Megan Whalen Turner had not read Lymond prior to writing the first three Attolia books!)
Someone said WRT Lymond, "The perfect man for you is a woman," per the delightful Ruoxi Chen on Twitter, and I heard it and I couldn't catch the context even then. But everyone else liked it!
Much discussion of Francis as female id figure, particularly with reference to fanfic sensibilities; vulnerability, opaqueness, competence, general extreme woobie nature (one of my favorite moments was when the panel defined and spelled "woobie" for an older audience member). No-one seemed willing to defend the end of Checkmate as falling on the right side of the drama/melodrama line, however.
Weird and bad shit in Dunnett's works. Racism: constantly naming that a compatriot of Lymond's was A Moor; a non-white character whose name I couldn't catch being described as oily and very sexually threatening toward Lymond; the emphasis on Lymond's overall paleness with regard to his (and Marthe's) beauty; some stunningly gross descriptions in the third mystery book, which is set in the Bahamas, and also Johnson Johnson having to outdo the black characters at everything. Sexuality and consent issues: a grooming-ish plotline in Niccolo; a Lymond character who dies because she has sex; highly weird consent stuff in the mysteries that I'm running out of time so will not go into, but which an audience member suggested may have been of its time (a lot of forcible grabbing in Barbara Cartland novels then).
Honestly I kind of want to reread Lymond now, but there's no way I could reasonably piecemeal them in the time available to me. Especially since someone after the panel convinced me to give Elizabeth Wein's Arthurian books another shot after I was so mad at The Winter Prince, so now that's a whole 'nother series on to the to-be-read list . . .
no subject
Date: 2018-07-17 06:29 pm (UTC)As an accidental beneficiary, I really appreciate it!
Especially since someone after the panel convinced me to give Elizabeth Wein's Arthurian books another shot after I was so mad at The Winter Prince, so now that's a whole 'nother series on to the to-be-read list . . .
I loved The Winter Prince, but I also love its Aksumite sequels. (And wish there were more of them, even though it's not like I begrudge the existence of Code Name Verity.) I hope you enjoy them!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-17 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-17 10:43 pm (UTC)What were you mad at it for?
no subject
Date: 2018-07-17 10:49 pm (UTC)did I massively misunderstand it? it doesn't look admitting of significant ambiguity.
well!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-18 04:10 am (UTC)Who did you think died? rot13 if necessary.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-19 11:19 pm (UTC)