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Jan. 12th, 2015 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo now that I'm no longer secret for Yuletide, who wants to talk about Hexwood? POSSIBLY my favorite Diana Wynne Jones (although as we all know that is a constantly shifting target.) So complex, so id-tastic, so completely fucking weird.
On Tumblr recently I said this about Hexwood:
My favorite thing about Diana Wynne Jones’ Hexwood continues to be how it is basically just Diana Wynne Jones triumphantly checking off an entire trope-bingo card. Diana Wynne Jones, thoughtfully perusing someone’s imagineyourotp list:
- linked by a psychic soulbond!
- forced to co-parent a small child!
- cute office coworkers AU!
- middle ages AU!
- contemporary high school AU!
- one of them has amnesia!
- the other one has amnesia!
- aliens try to make them do it!
- SOMEBODY’S A DRAGON!
and looking at her romantic leads, who are ALREADY a galactic revolutionary space heiress and an angsty mind-controlled slave who assassinates people for the evil overlords that her family is trying to overthrow, and being, like, “yeah, OK, pretty sure I can also hit all these in one book.”
AND SHE DOES, and the book isn't even ABOUT all of that, is the thing. (Although in a way it is, because what is the main theme of angsty fanfic AUs if not the amount of physical and psychological trauma that a person can take and still retain a self that is capable of loving others? The Bannus is the world's most dedicated writer of hurt/comfort idfic.) Anyway. I don't actually think DWJ started out by planning to write the world's greatest one-book fanfic bingo square, ALTHOUGH MAYBE SHE DID. I waffle on where I think DWJ did start out when planning Hexwood, because it's a book in which almost every main character turns out to be somebody completely different from the person they're introduced as (and they don't usually know it) and, like, how do you even start planning out that plot in advance?
But today, at least my strongest hypothesis is that Diana Wynne Jones started by reading at Arthurian myths, and said, "well, there's sure a lot of weird incest in that story," and then she looked at Norse mythology and said, "well, there's also even more weird incest in those stories," and then said, "hmmmm, you know what would make all that weird incest make sense? If it was all part of a GIANT GALACTIC BREEDING PROGRAM."
...and let's just stop for a minute and remember that Diana Wynne Jones wrote a book about a giant galactic breeding program, among other things. Hexwood is actually probably DWJ's most weirdly sexual book? Which also goes back to the idfic factor of Mordion and Vierran's relationship, and is especially strange for a book that I think ... is probably ... in large part about parenting? Or at least child-raising. The most important lesson in the book, the one that everything is about getting Mordion and Hume both to learn and internalize, is that the ultimate sin a person can commit is in thinking of a child as something to be used. Such as, for example, in a GIANT EVIL INTERGALACTIC BREEDING PROGRAM. It is not the child's fault if they are used, but it is their responsibility not to go on to do it to anyone else.
Which also is all tied in with the ways that the book is also about trauma and recovery, and how it is therefore very deliberately structured incoherently -- "like human memory" -- or like a traumatic experience relived. Sometimes with the help of a giant sparkly diamond net of manpain. Wow, this post is possibly more incoherent than the book. I JUST LOVE HEXWOOD A LOT.
On Tumblr recently I said this about Hexwood:
My favorite thing about Diana Wynne Jones’ Hexwood continues to be how it is basically just Diana Wynne Jones triumphantly checking off an entire trope-bingo card. Diana Wynne Jones, thoughtfully perusing someone’s imagineyourotp list:
- linked by a psychic soulbond!
- forced to co-parent a small child!
- cute office coworkers AU!
- middle ages AU!
- contemporary high school AU!
- one of them has amnesia!
- the other one has amnesia!
- aliens try to make them do it!
- SOMEBODY’S A DRAGON!
and looking at her romantic leads, who are ALREADY a galactic revolutionary space heiress and an angsty mind-controlled slave who assassinates people for the evil overlords that her family is trying to overthrow, and being, like, “yeah, OK, pretty sure I can also hit all these in one book.”
AND SHE DOES, and the book isn't even ABOUT all of that, is the thing. (Although in a way it is, because what is the main theme of angsty fanfic AUs if not the amount of physical and psychological trauma that a person can take and still retain a self that is capable of loving others? The Bannus is the world's most dedicated writer of hurt/comfort idfic.) Anyway. I don't actually think DWJ started out by planning to write the world's greatest one-book fanfic bingo square, ALTHOUGH MAYBE SHE DID. I waffle on where I think DWJ did start out when planning Hexwood, because it's a book in which almost every main character turns out to be somebody completely different from the person they're introduced as (and they don't usually know it) and, like, how do you even start planning out that plot in advance?
But today, at least my strongest hypothesis is that Diana Wynne Jones started by reading at Arthurian myths, and said, "well, there's sure a lot of weird incest in that story," and then she looked at Norse mythology and said, "well, there's also even more weird incest in those stories," and then said, "hmmmm, you know what would make all that weird incest make sense? If it was all part of a GIANT GALACTIC BREEDING PROGRAM."
...and let's just stop for a minute and remember that Diana Wynne Jones wrote a book about a giant galactic breeding program, among other things. Hexwood is actually probably DWJ's most weirdly sexual book? Which also goes back to the idfic factor of Mordion and Vierran's relationship, and is especially strange for a book that I think ... is probably ... in large part about parenting? Or at least child-raising. The most important lesson in the book, the one that everything is about getting Mordion and Hume both to learn and internalize, is that the ultimate sin a person can commit is in thinking of a child as something to be used. Such as, for example, in a GIANT EVIL INTERGALACTIC BREEDING PROGRAM. It is not the child's fault if they are used, but it is their responsibility not to go on to do it to anyone else.
Which also is all tied in with the ways that the book is also about trauma and recovery, and how it is therefore very deliberately structured incoherently -- "like human memory" -- or like a traumatic experience relived. Sometimes with the help of a giant sparkly diamond net of manpain. Wow, this post is possibly more incoherent than the book. I JUST LOVE HEXWOOD A LOT.
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Date: 2015-01-13 02:55 am (UTC)It is totally DWJ's epic trope bingo card, in FULL BLACKOUT MODE, because that is just how she rolls. I seem to recall reading somewhere that DWJ never really plots her stories in advance, just sort of figures them out as she writes? Which is both terrifying and yet also weirdly hilarious to me. I imagine any writer sitting down to try and plot this in advance would probably just throw their hands up in terror and quit anyway.
I probably need to get my own copy so I can re-read it another... 5 times or something. I should probably re-read Fire and Hemlock too, speaking of peculiarly inexplicable DWJs.
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Date: 2015-01-13 03:50 am (UTC)Ha! TRUE. The thing about Fire and Hemlock is that it almost seems like it's going to make sense, until the end, at which point everything reveals itself to have been poetry logic and not logic logic ALL ALONG.
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Date: 2015-01-13 04:21 am (UTC)(All of the above wildly inaccurate due to me completely forgetting who was who when what where how in Hexwood)
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Date: 2015-01-14 01:42 pm (UTC)