![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minutia_rThere’s this recurring motif in Diana Wynne Jones’ books where there is some sort of magic preventing the characters from thinking about a certain subject, or from talking about it, or preventing other people from believing them if they do talk about it. This is, on one hand, a convenient thing to have in one’s plotting toolkit--it addresses the “but why didn’t they just tell the adults and have them fix it” problem that crops up in children’s and YA books, and it lets you control the pacing of revelations and things like that.
More importantly, it’s often a metaphor for an abusive family situation: the feeling that some intangible malign force is preventing the characters from a) realizing something is wrong, b) talking about the thing that is wrong, and/or c) having other people understand about the thing if they do try to express it.
I mention that in order to mention this:
although you know the snow will follow by greenlily
(Yes, this is a yuletide rec. Maybe at some point I will do a proper recs post? Or maybe not. I’m not done reading yuletide yet, although I have definitely been slowing down.)
Anyway! In addition to being a very good sort of Magids fanfic, and painting a vivid if not necessarily dramatic picture of Roddy’s learning the work of the Lady of Governance and dealing with the emotional aftermath of some of the events in The Merlin Conspiracy, it uses the motif of the don’t-notice-don’t-talk-about-it magic.
Only here it’s not a metaphor for abuse--it’s a metaphor for the erasure of women’s roles in history.
And it works; it’s lovely; it fits in perfectly with the characters and world and themes of the book. And this sort of engagement with and reinterpretation of the source material is one of the things you can do with fanfic that you can’t do in any other genre.
And that’s why fic is so great.
More importantly, it’s often a metaphor for an abusive family situation: the feeling that some intangible malign force is preventing the characters from a) realizing something is wrong, b) talking about the thing that is wrong, and/or c) having other people understand about the thing if they do try to express it.
I mention that in order to mention this:
although you know the snow will follow by greenlily
(Yes, this is a yuletide rec. Maybe at some point I will do a proper recs post? Or maybe not. I’m not done reading yuletide yet, although I have definitely been slowing down.)
Anyway! In addition to being a very good sort of Magids fanfic, and painting a vivid if not necessarily dramatic picture of Roddy’s learning the work of the Lady of Governance and dealing with the emotional aftermath of some of the events in The Merlin Conspiracy, it uses the motif of the don’t-notice-don’t-talk-about-it magic.
Only here it’s not a metaphor for abuse--it’s a metaphor for the erasure of women’s roles in history.
And it works; it’s lovely; it fits in perfectly with the characters and world and themes of the book. And this sort of engagement with and reinterpretation of the source material is one of the things you can do with fanfic that you can’t do in any other genre.
And that’s why fic is so great.
