skygiants | (no subject)

I've spent the past three days trading intermittently off with

genarti on her Kobo so we could both finish Tasha Suri's Empire of Sand in time for our book group today. This is Mughal Empire-inspired high fantasy, set in a world in which an omnipresent empire has been overtaking various neighbors by appropriating the magic of the local desert tribe, the Amrithi. Our heroine Mehr is the half-Amrithi illegitimate daughter of an Imperial noblewoman, who ends up unfortunately coming to the attention of the head of the Imperial mystics. Highly fraught arranged marriage, terrible magical coercion, and complex rules-lawyering around binding mystical vows ensue!

The thing I like most about this book is the way it handles domestic sphace: there's a lot of nuance to the way it shows the restrictions on women's roles within the Empire as a double-edged sword, which leave Mehr very few choices but also grant her certain privileges and protections that have value to her at key moments. Mehr spends a lot of time moving very cautiously through the space allowed to her, building relationships with other women, paying attention to the politics of the servant's quarters and exploiting very small openings for as much effect as possible, and it's all very sharply drawn and feels really grounded. The magical element felt significantly less grounded to me and I did in fact have many questions about how some of it worked, but I didn't mind all that much because the human world felt so clear and real and also because I do love magical rules-lawyering. It's also very good about showing how people can try very hard to be kind within a very limited scope of preassumptions and prejudices, and how neither the kindness/affection nor the damage done by their beliefs invalidates the other.

Also, of course, there is the simple tropey appeal of "they're in a forced marriage that neither of them wanted and trying very hard to be respectful to each other about it while also falling in love," flavored with the additional kinkmeme-prompt aspect of "he's constantly fighting a magical geas that compels him to consummate the marriage because if they ever do bang they'll be bound together with terrible consequences."

All of this started me thinking a bit about the appeal of tropes wherein the two parties are forced together by some kind of dramatic circumstance, whether that's arranged marriage or having to complete a perilous journey together or what, and then fall in love as a result -- it's almost the polar opposite of the soulmate-style trope, in a way? The question asked by these stories is not why these particular people are drawn to each other among all the other people in the world, because they're not initially at all. But then you put them in a situation where they're forced to trust and rely on each other to such an extent that it makes perfect sense that they would fall in love -- which sort of presents an implicit thesis that, in fact, if you get to know most anybody well enough, odds are good that you will find they are in fact probably worthy of love. And I think there is actually something really appealing about that! It's nice to think that love is not contingent upon some kind of special quality, that under the right circumstances any human has things about them that are worth loving.

(Of course many stories with this premise try to have their cake and eat it too by having an instant attraction between the two people to show that actually they were drawn to each other from the beginning, but there's no fun in that, the fun is in taking two people who have no reason to pay attention to each other at all and then gradually revealing why they are worthy of love to each other! That's romance!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

superborb

Interesting, I always thought of a lot of soulmate style tropes as also falling into that same category: they may not be initially in love, but the forced intimacy causes it to move along? I mean, excluding the "soulmate/love at first glance," but the -- soulmarks and related versions of soulmates

From:

skygiants

Hmm, I see what you mean but I think it's maybe sort of a question of the two ends coming round to the same thing -- the actual story about the process of falling in love in a presure-cooker looks quite similar on an intimacy-plot-beats level, but the basic premise that two people can be destined for each other on some level feels very different to me on a philosophical level than the idea that any two people coincidentally put into an intense situation may well fall in love as a result of that situation.

From:

shati

It doesn't feel that different from me, but I think I think about it more as like -- from a Doylist perspective, the pressure cooker situation does actually mean they're destined to fall in love. It does make sense that you'd think of them as Watsonian opposites, though. (Although I feel like most? many? soulmate AUs could easily tack on a reveal that the soulmate marks were totally random the whole time. ETA: Like, to the extent that the soulmate thing influences the plot, it's usually just in that the characters know they're soulmates, which isn't inherently that different from knowing they're married.)

Edited Date: 2020-10-26 04:06 am (UTC)

From:

superborb

Ahh, you've nailed why I think of them as so similar -- when you read the trope, as a reader you know that they're going to fall in love, even if the in-universe explanation is so polar opposite.

I really want that soulmark AU where the end reveal is that it was random. Come on, fandom, where are all the people who love to deconstruct tropes!!

From:

skygiants

It's true, on a Doylian level, "the universe has announced that they are destined for each other" is really just making transparent the decision that "I, the writer, am God of this universe and have put them into this situation to ensure that they are destined for each other ..." Knowing that you're soulmates and knowing that you're married does feel different to me though! Like, with a soulmate reveal, there's no real injunction to change your life in any way but there is an expectation that you're going to feel a certain way, all the plot drivers are internal, whereas with a marriage your life is going to change but there's no (Watsonian) expectation that your feelings or beliefs will, and the difference between internal and external drivers does feel significant to me on a narrative level.

("the soulmarks were totally random the whole time" would indeed be an easy way to enhance my appreciation of soulmate tropes a thousandfold.)

From:

sovay

It's nice to think that love is not contingent upon some kind of special quality, that under the right circumstances any human has things about them that are worth loving.

+1, which is why I suspect I enjoy this narrative about equally in its romantic and non-romantic manifestations.

From:

skygiants

Oh, yeah, for sure -- and found family tropes often work in this way, too, and stories about grizzled loners accidentally finding themselves adopted by proteges, and all sorts of things that more or less rely on the idea that people who spend enough time together will find themselves valuing each other.

From:

asakiyume

Yes!

From:

whimsyful

Ooh this sounds right up my alley! I think this came out around the same time a whole bunch of diverse YA/fantasy romances did (several of which I was pretty meh on), so this ended up lost in the shuffle. But I love women working within the constraints of their society and magical rules-lawyering, and I love the arranged marriage trope, so off to check this out from the library I go!

From:

lirazel

Imo, it's definitely a cut above the typical YA fantasy romance offerings. I remember saying when it came out that I bet one day Tasha Suri is going to write one of my favorite books.

From:

skygiants

Apparently her new one is lesbians and I'm very excited!!

From:

skygiants

I hope you enjoy it if you read it!

(This comment actually triggered a lively discussion between me and

ep_birdsall wherein she was like "it's not YA though!" and I was like "well, thematically I would agree and I don't think it's written like a YA, but on a basic plot level it's a pretty common YA structure so one can easily see why it would be marketed that way -" I don't think we ever actually did reach a consensus.)

From:

chestnut_pod

Oh, I loved (loved!) this book, and the sequel is exactly as good. It and A Memory Called Empire live together in my head a little for what they have to say about watching your culture being eaten from the belly of the beast. I also think it serves as an interesting example of the "woman author's fantasy shoved into YA despite not being like YA, at all" genre, sigh.

Honestly, I thought the magic and the connection to elemental, place-based spirits was beautiful to read. The whole geas-thing being a kind of metaphor for the twisting of indigenous knowledge and talents by appropriating oppressors really worked for me -- and also just yes, mudras as magical communication! What an idea.

From:

skygiants

I was definitely also thinking of A Memory Called Empire as I read it! That and to some extent the Daevabad books, which were the first comp that came up in my book group, but those are really so thematically different -- they're big and broad and politics-y and this one is so intimate despite the world-shaking implications.

I thought the magic as metaphor worked really well and I loved the mudras element especially, but I had a lot of questions about some of the actual logistics of how it related to the plot (how long ago did Amun's llast partner die? have the storms gone un-danced before they turned up Mehr and her gift? what happens then?). Admittedly I may have missed the answers to some of these questions in the rush to finish before deadline!

I'm very excited for the sequel! I kept expecting this book to end on a cliffhanger (because I had a vague sense that there was a sequel) and I was so delighted that it didn't, and then even more delighted when I found out the next book was decades in the future and about her sister.

From:

halojedha

I have just bought this book on the strength of this recommendation! Navigating court politics and gendered constraints and magical rules lawyering are all things I like to read about :)

From:

skygiants

I very much hope you enjoy it! :D

From:

lirazel

flavored with the additional kinkmeme-prompt aspect of "he's constantly fighting a magical geas that compels him to consummate the marriage because if they ever do bang they'll be bound together with terrible consequences."

I. KNOW.

Your last two paragraphs basically encapsulate my feelings about what I like in a romantic storyline.

From:

skygiants

One of my favorite parts of book club was listening to a participant who is not much in fan/internet circles (to my knowledge) attempting to describe the General Vibe of the whole geas element of the romance...

From:

aberration

But then you put them in a situation where they're forced to trust and rely on each other to such an extent that it makes perfect sense that they would fall in love -- which sort of presents an implicit thesis that, in fact, if you get to know most anybody well enough, odds are good that you will find they are in fact probably worthy of love.

While I can get the appeal of this when it comes to friendship, I have a... really hard stop on it for romance. In general I'm not that into coerced-into-romance-or-sex tropes (really I feel like my big exception is when the parties involved are attracted but can't act on it for some reason, so the 'having to do a couple thing' scenario gives them an opportunity to act out those roles when they otherwise couldn't). But in this case it's also hard to not also see an implicit message that if you're put in that situation and then don't fall in love with the other person, then there must in turn be something wrong with you or the other person. When people can just not want to be with each other romantically. But I do get that 'and then they went on with their lives because one or both weren't interested in each other romantically' isn't I guess as appealing a storyline though as I'm typing it, if I were going read some coerced relationship thing, that sounds like a super appealing resolution for me.

I feel like part of my problem is that imagining myself in a situation like that, being forced by magic or custom into a relationship I didn't want to be in, would be so traumatic for me that I could never consider pursuing that relationship regardless, even if maybe it were something I could have come around to in the absence of coercion. And I've also felt like a bad person before for not magically becoming romantically interested in someone no matter how nice and perfectly good as a person they were.

also I was trying to figure out if I was being hypocritical on this because Utena... but I feel like in Utena the point is that every person involved is abusing/exploiting Anthy in some way, even when they have good intentions, because the construct of the Duels/Rose Bride and the coercion involved is inherently exploitative and abusive.

I'm also afraid this comes off like I don't like any potentially ~*~problematic~*~ tropes/kinks when like. I definitely do. I also don't generally think I have nice reasons for them somewhere? The drama and sometimes deviancy of it is part of, or is the, appeal.

From:

skygiants

TBH arranged marriage is not one of the variants on this particular trope that I'm most interested in, but I do really like 'two very different people have to go on a perilous journey and learn to trust each other and maybe fall in love' or 'two very different people are trapped together in a dangerous situation and learn to trust each other and maybe fall in love' and when I was reading this book I started to think about how those things felt adjacent to arranged marriage tropes to me and wanted to ramble about it a little. I can absolutely see why the specifically coercive-romantic/sexual-relationship aspect of that particular subgenre would throw up a different set of issues, though. But generally, I'm interested in all kinds of situational intimacy, and in the idea that people don't need to be on-the-surface compatible to find elements of connection; as I was talking about with

sovay upthread, I do enjoy the romantic ones but I also like every time a grim loner adopts a plucky orphan after they go through peril together, or whatever. The real-world example I come back to on this a lot is my grad school, which had really small classes with very intense very synchronized schedules that usually ended up in either a group of people becoming extremely tightly bonded or becoming extremely divisive and fractured, and whether it ended up either way is not a judgment on any of the people involved, just the way the various personalities ended up bouncing off each other. So I like stories that lean into that, and I like the idea that the connections you end up making and valuing aren't always the ones that you expect to make or value.

(Though from your last paragraph I'm a bit worried that I came across as sanctimonious in this post; I really wasn't trying to be holier-than-thou about it in theorizing on the narrative appeal of this particular broad swathe of trope-genres. There are many, many nonsense tropes I love For Dramatic Reasons Only!)

Edited Date: 2020-11-01 05:08 am (UTC)

From:

asakiyume

Wow, I started out highlighting this, because three cheers for this:

It's also very good about showing how people can try very hard to be kind within a very limited scope of preassumptions and prejudices, and how neither the kindness/affection nor the damage done by their beliefs invalidates the other.

But then I got to your thoughts about contrasting the enemies-to-lovers trope with the soulmates trope, and that was just!!! such a great insight. And by the time I got to this

which sort of presents an implicit thesis that, in fact, if you get to know most anybody well enough, odds are good that you will find they are in fact probably worthy of love

--I was so full of feelings. I do think that there are some people who, no matter how much you get to know them, you can find it hard to develop an enthusiastic love for, but I totally totally believe that you can come to love many people, given time and circumstance, and I love that.

And I absolutely believe that love isn't contingent on a special quality.

(I also smiled when you said you loved magic rules lawyering ^_^)

Edited (oops, typo) Date: 2020-10-26 08:07 pm (UTC)

From:

skygiants

Yeah, agreed! I definitely think there are some people who are just never going to click with each other no matter what the circumstances (and not even necessarily a judgment on them, just fundamental incompatibility) but I also think that love in all its forms is very much a combination of personality and circumstance and luck, with a heavy lean on circumstance, and it's really neat to think about all the different ways that people can find to connect to each other!

From:

holyschist

Hmmm, I am very much into this kind of story and I think that it is partially about that and partially - I don't know, maybe a wish fulfillment of circumstances making it easier to connect with people in a world where circumstances often force us to spend most of our time on other things? Like, I think about how it is relatively easier to make friends in school when you're spending all day together doing the same things, or the prevalence of TV shows about people with high-intensity jobs whose coworkers are their "family" and friends. Situational bonding can happen quickly and feel great, without all that awkwardness of (friend) dating and trying not to come on too weird/strong/indifferent/whatever.

I only like the mandatory marriage trope in fiction, but IRL I am always extremely grateful for proximity situations that force me to make friends, or I wouldn't have very many. Of course IRL not everyone stuck on a road trip or in a stressful situation is going to be super compatible, but Disaster Unbonding is a different story trope.

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I think it is definitely about that too! I mentioned upthread that my big personal context for the benefits of situational intimacy is my grad program, which always seemed to turn out a group of 6-10 people who bonded intensely or a group of 6-10 people who hated each other passionately -- I was lucky enough to get a year that bonded intensely, and sometime in the second year, one of my now-close friends was like "I remember sitting around the intro table the first day when we were doing introductions and thinking 'wow, I don't think I'm going to be compatible with any of these people, too bad I won't have friends in grad school!' Who knew!" Which for sure ties into some of my feelings about this and the people whom one can recognize the points of connection with instantly, and the people whose points of connection aren't immediately obvious but reveal themselves under pressure, and I think it is definitely pleasantly wish-fulfillment-y -- but also often true! -- to think that many people do have those points of connection underneath and that in an intense situation the people one was with would see one's value clearly.

(...and having said all this I do have mixed feelings about all the TV shows that feature work environments where the work crew comes to stand in for Friends And Family in their entirety, because I absolutely get the appeal but it also ties into the pressures of capitalism and how Job Is Life in some ways I think perhaps bear inspecting more closely, but that's maybe a whole other long ramble.)

From:

holyschist

which always seemed to turn out a group of 6-10 people who bonded intensely or a group of 6-10 people who hated each other passionately

Hahhhh, that is...familiar. My grad school batch failed to gel - I do have one very good friend out of it (who I didn't really become friends with until the second year, and definitely didn't see instant points of connection with!) and a few others I talk to sometimes, but I've met people from batches before and after mine that did gel (some even got married out of it!) and the contrast is...striking. And while I've had those instant intense connections with many people over the years, most of those friendships faded away, so they're kind of bittersweet to think about. But then, so have many of the friendships under pressure (diamondships?).

...and having said all this I do have mixed feelings about all the TV shows that feature work environments where the work crew comes to stand in for Friends And Family in their entirety, because I absolutely get the appeal but it also ties into the pressures of capitalism and how Job Is Life in some ways I think perhaps bear inspecting more closely, but that's maybe a whole other long ramble.

Oh god, me too, SO MUCH. At the same time, I have...personally been happiest in work environments (mostly academic) that tend that way, versus the ones where I can't wait to leave and see the people I actually like. But I also believe in work-life balance and fuck the pressures of capitalism that make work our Identity and Self-Worth and...yeah. To some extent I think it's a storytelling device because the setting is the workplace and showing people's full lives outside of it can be narratively tricky - but some shows at least manage to have the Reoccurring Best Friend or family members or something to hint at it. Others just...don't, they're like "this character lives in the basement at work and that's fine" (it's not fine).