and I just found out about "shipping," too

[ellenkushner]

Since I live to kill off my own beloved characters, I have to live with readers' reactions - and so, of course, do the readers.

Although it doesn't specifically mention my Riverside stories  "The Death of the Duke" or "The Man with the Knives",  the recent acafenic essay by Racheline Maltese, Tangible Reality of Absence: Fan Communities and the Mourning of Fictional Characters , has a lot of interesting things to say about responses to the deaths of fictional characters, from Wilbur's friend Charlotte the Spider to Ianto Jones [argh! he dies?! OK, I'm behind...] to Severus Snape (mais biensur.  He had it coming.  Delia & I like to play a little game while watching TV (at the commercials) or new plays (at intermission) called "Marked For Death" - as in, "Is s/he..?"), to Sherlock Holmes (though, like Halley's Comet, he tends to come 'round again).  Cool stuff.  And what can I say?  As an artist, I love seeing things through to the bitter end - and I've always responded to tragedy as a genre - with the understanding that they're not always the same thing.  

Oh, yeah; and Thomas the Rhymer, don't forget that.  Sorry, folks; it's just the way I roll, given world enough, and time.

Comments

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

It's true. I just the other day stumbled upon a book of yours that gives the main character something like 20 ways to die ;)

And I said *blink*

*blinkblink*

And went and put it on the shelf with the other Ellen Kushners.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

OK, feeling dim here (though very pleased) - which one's the "20 ways" book?

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Thaaaat'd be childhood favorite The Knights of the Round Table.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhh yeahhhhhh.... those!

I actually just did a really fun interview about CYOAs w/Molly Tanzer, who posted:
"In April I'll have an article up on Fantasy Magazine on the Choose Your Own Adventure series (enormous thanks to series authors Ellen Kushner and Edward Packard, and to all my FB peeps who helped!)"

I am tickled to death that that was one of your faves. It was hell to write, as I procrastinated and didn't even start it til I'd just moved to Boston & started a new job at WGBH... *dumb* *dumb* *live and learn*

Interesting

[(Anonymous)]

As a reader and writer of fanfiction, I think the scorn most fans have for people who profess their love for characters a little too much is a manifestation of other forces in fan culture. In the fanfic community, it's the nadir of class to imagine oneself in a relationship with one of the characters. This is where shipping comes in; it's appropriate, encouraged, to be massively emotionally invested in a fictional relationship between two fictional characters, whether or not they're ever together in the original "canon." On the other hand, writing yourself into the story is the quickest way to ensure no one wants to read it.

That's what, to me, makes Wash's death different from Snape or Ianto: there's not a strong shipping community for Firefly in general, and because Zoe and Wash are together from the beginning, it's not a compelling romance narrative for most shippers. Snape is never involved with anyone in the books, but he's widely shipped with almost everyone. In the fanfic community, the death of a character cuts off future stories one might want to imagine them in, including any unresolved romances. We engage with characters both as if they are people (I spend more time with certain fictional characters than any one person in my real life) and the way any author views characters they write. We're frustrated by the door shutting on them, saddened by their deaths as in any good tragedy, but we also get to keep them alive more than other fans do. You can always set your story in the past, and the fanfic community can keep a character living and breathing long after they're dead in canon. Maybe we look down a bit on people who can't step out of the narrative enough to engage in that kind of play with us.

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

Given world enough, and time, isn't everything a tragedy, and happy endings only where we run out of rope?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Profound words, my friend.

Though there is a difference between Big T "Tragedy" as an art form, and small t "tragedy" that means we don't like it (like, well, things we love ending before we want them to - including lives). I enjoy the "T," thogh the "t," not so much.

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

"A generous prince and patron indeed," she said; "and a most courtly servant for ladies, that we must rot to-morrow like the aloe-flower, and all to sauce his dish with a biting something of fragility and non-perpetuity."

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I think I love you.

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

Oh that's just the Eddison talking. [Blushes, draws foot in the dust, dar shucks.]

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Ha! Plate o'Shrimp again - see my response to Rikibeth, below.

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

Ye gods and little fishes but I love that book beyond all reason and rhyme.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Torchwood played like weak fan fic to me most of the way through, because of the refusal to let the characters ever behave as adults, even in really serious circumstances. The last series surprised me because it finally delivered that grown-up quality that I had been missing. And I'm uncomfortable with anything that works too hard to protect reader/viewer/author favourites, because it seems to me that to do so breaks the 4th wall. I think what I want most of all in a book or play or series is fidelity to the environment and its rules. If that means someone dies, then so be it. What is needful trumps sentiment every time.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

But it's interesting what people find "needful" or not. There's a world of different needs & aesthetics out there: When you've read as many reviews of the same work (ahem that would be mine) as I have, you really that one man's meat is truly another man's poison.

Which is not to say I disagree with your basic premise.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That's certainly true. I was thinking of needful in terms of structure, mainly -- where something is necessary to the plot, say. But there are many other contexts.
I really should not try lit crit at bedtime!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Aw, c'mon - it's fun to discuss! I enjoy it; you think such good thoughts.

[csecooney.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about this, this morning -- how you sort of unflinchingly do the whole life-cycle thing in your work, rather than just stopping at a wedding or an inheritance. What an apropos post. What Amal and I like to call an instance of SAMEBRAIN.

SAMEBRAIN

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

We've got to stop meeting like this - or maybe not....!

Stop meeting???

[csecooney.livejournal.com]

Not on your life!

Well...

Okay, maybe on your life. Or at the point of a knife.

Otherwise, you're stuck with me as your LJ friend. Of course, you could always delete me out of your CyberLife. One stroke of the ring-laden finger, and I'm gone forever!

Re: Stop meeting???

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all -- but never leave me!

I was referring only to those moments that cause Delia or me to exclaim, "Get outta my brain!"

But not really.

Actually, does this also count as a "Plate o' Shrimp" experience?

'A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example, show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, "plate," or "shrimp," or "plate o' shrimp" out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.' --Repo Man

Re: Stop meeting???

[csecooney.livejournal.com]

Ha!

Synchonicity

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

Actually, does this also count as a "Plate o' Shrimp" experience?

Now there's a pop cultural reference I haven't heard for a good long while. I saw "Repo Man" in 1984 while I was a grad student at the U.Wisc.-Madison. Upon reading your nod to Miller's theory, I wondered if we still had the soundtrack, which I had bought for the spousal unit not long after the movie was released. So I scuttled downstairs to rifle through the old vinyls (yes, we have a functional turntable) and lo and behold! Not only did I find the album but also the little card I had made over 20 years ago to go with it. And here's the evidence:

(http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d18/docbushwell/?action=view&current=RepoManalbum1.jpg)

Back to the subject at hand, I read the earnest and interesting essay and came away with two nifty terms: the enchanted believer and the ironic believer. The example of Charlotte's Web in particular struck a chord with me, perhaps illustrating why I might not be lumped into either of those bins. As a kid, I adored Charlotte's Web but even though Charlotte's death made me sad, it was also a natural outcome. In part, this was because E.B. White ensured that theme came through loud and clear. But it was also because I grew up on a farm and knew those big beautiful orb weavers did not live past a hard frost. Similarly, I knew death in the form of our chicks that became chickens and calves that became cattle with these eventually winding up on our dinner table. So overwrought sentimentalism over the deaths of fictional characters just isn't part of my inherent template and never has been.

That said, character death will make my old eyes misty. Certainly The Man with the Knives and Thomas the Rhymer did so. The former had a haunting quality that lingered with me for quite some time after I finished the story, and the latter? Oh, that was lovely. As far as death scenes go, the Big One™ in Cormac McCarthy's The Road had me sobbing, and that's saying a lot for this cynical old soul. However, once I shut the books, I didn't don black, but gave the authors a vigorous nod of approval and a "well done" for being able to move me so.

Re: Synchonicity

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is Too Good! Thank you for posting the photo - and for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you that just being beautifully moved can be an end in itself. I wonder if all this connects up with @deliasherman's post today on rejecting distancing irony?

[lolafeist.livejournal.com]

I just had a good giggle over your subject line.

I'm looking forward to reading this essay. I'm definitely still a little broken over "The Man with the Knives."

Marked for death! My husband and I play that as well.

As an artist, I love seeing things through to the bitter end - and I've always responded to tragedy as a genre - with the understanding that they're not always the same thing.

Love that.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I think I love you, too! (Oh, and your husband, of course.)

[lolafeist.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading the essay, and I have to say that this is the most wonderful and unintentionally hilarious thing I've ever read in academia:

41 Wank is the preferred noun for fandom disagreements that are considered by the community to be unreasonable and worthy of mockery, and a number of websites are dedicated to tracking and documenting the history of these wanks.

I'm going to forever reflect on "documenting the history of these wanks" and laugh and laugh.

The author had a very cool, respectful perspective on fan culture. I always wonder how professional writers/artists feel when confronted directly with fandom! We're a quirky bunch.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

It's stories like "The Death of the Duke" and "The Man With The Knives" that have me hoping strongly for an afterlife for fictional characters, because Richard and Alec deserve to be together FOREVER.

Just sayin'.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know . . . When I was in college, I wrote a sonnet for another couple in a (failed) novel I was writing (no, wait - I actually published the first 3 chapters as short stories in various places early in my career! Anything with the word "Unicorn" in the title was them. Still a failed novel, though...) - anyhow, Sonnet was title something along the lines of:

"Postulating a Garden, like Doctor Vandermast's, wherein go all True Lovers"

...It was my rather guilty offering to my poor, abused characters. The reference is to E.R. Eddison's MISTRESS OF MISTRESSES, which was something of a cult book for us, then. Someone has kindly posted that very chapter online here:
http://ramblingcousin.blogspot.com/2010/04/enchanted-garden-of-barganax.html

...though 'tis writ somewhat crabbedly and damnably long.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

This would be the same garden or clearing where Guinevere walks arm-in-arm with Arthur and Lancelot in Thomas the Rhymer, no?

If you like, I'll tell you the kindness I did for the version of Lindley I borrowed, because I'm hopelessly sentimental that way.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Um, er....Yes, I suppose it would be!

Poor Lindley - he's Delia's character - but we would both very much enjoy hearing what you did for him.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

He and his beloved performed a marriage ritual that (among other things) combines their life energy into one pool, which has the effect of guaranteeing that they'll die at the same moment, and not have to live without each other.

They find this very reassuring.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

You are so kind to our poor people!

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Lindley was irresistible -- sweet and vulnerable and his only crime was loving unwisely -- of COURSE we had to take him and give him a happier resolution. Now that he's secure and loved (and spoiled rotten with velvet and cashmere besides) we feel much better.

[redrose3125.livejournal.com]

oh God, yes!

[regicidaldwarf.livejournal.com]

Shoot, I still haven't read Man with the Knives. *kicks self*

That is something that's stuck with me about your books/stories though. There's a completeness there - that we see them through to the end, which is something we don't get a lot of. It hurts, but at the same time we understand, because given enough time everyone dies.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying that. I came under attack (well, some gentle whining) from some "shipping" friends last week, and so it's nice to see the argument for my own impulses put so neatly into language.

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

With your characters it's been about bringing their full story forward (though I haven't actually read "The Man With the Knives" yet so let's not go into too much detail on that), so I don't have any problems with that. When I think about this subject in general I tend not to think about the things I'm more fannish about, but instead I think about the writing of Caitlín R. Kiernan. She does terrible things to her characters, not just killing them but damaging and destroying them in all kinds of ways. But I can't say that she's ever done anything to her characters that didn't serve the story, so those hurt but those hurts heal. (though there is one that lingers for me where she basically stripped away a character's entire reality; it's not that it didn't serve the story it's that it's like she reached in my head and pushed the "Worst Thing Imaginable" button). Also, I remember being kind of upset when Geoffrey Rush showed up at the end of the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie because I felt his character had had a good death. And then I despaired of finding people who understood what I meant by that. But (ACK, hit the button by mistake!) I don't think I've even really processed the death of Ianto yet because I'm still upset about the deaths of Toshiko and Owen. Heck, you can get an emotional response from me talking about the death of Fred on Angel. Some of them (AGAIN and now where did my paragraph breaks go? Sorry about the comment spam, I'm giving up now.)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I think what you're talking about is the sort of aesthetic pleasure and emotional integrity that good art provides us. I so know what you mean by "a good death" (in fiction, anway)!