wallacepolsom
Today's Document
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Peter Solarz
Stranger Things
pixel skylines
titsay
JVL
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
DEAR READER
Andulka
Cosmic Funnies
taylor price
★
Product Placement
blake kathryn
we're not kids anymore.
Love Begins
🪼
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@august-persona
Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, based on the folk tale Tam Lin and Eliot’s Four Quartets, is one of my all-time favourite books. The
I have subtitled this essay “A Personal Odyssey”. Hackneyed though this is, I think it is relevant in more than one way. I have never been a
^DWJ's essay about Fire and Hemlock
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It's always "how would this fat character be strong and athletic"
And not "how would this dehydrated skinny character even survive with the amount of physical exertion they go through"
"People may wonder how Mitt came to join the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end."
Pre-Wilton Leslie Piper!
I don't think I got his face shape quite as I imagined, but I am proud of the grin (I had no idea I could have such a tricky time drawing a smile)
i think this more or less covers all the bases (i may have missed one or two obvious ones, though)
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Gosh, I love the rehearsal scene in Fire and Hemlock so much! The relief, the warm welcome everyone in the quartet gave Polly, how DWJ described the details of each musician style of playing, how unfussy but caring Mr.Lynn was compared to her father, the little jokes here and there etc. Her writing was so good I could picture them so vividly in my mind.
i may be an ugly and unlovable bastard in human terms but in gargoyle terms? lets just say i’d be at the top of the cathedral
hey i’m loosing my mind over this lad
So I was flipping through Fire and Hemlock yesterday because I was suddenly inspired to conjure up some Leslie Piper fanart, and then I came to this part:
"Polly followed him, scarcely able to see straight for confusion. She knew just how Mr. Lynn must be feeling. Leslie was nice. The discovery made her squiggle inside, in a way that could have been pleasant but was probably nasty."
And it was that last sentence, and then the following descriptions of the real Edna, that got me really thinking, and then it came to me in a flash.
I remember being a bit confused on my first full read-through of the novel why Leslie should come out so different to how Polly and Tom imagined him when both of their initial ideas of who Leslie should be were so clear - but I was soon able to chalk that up to how everything they made up was supposed to sort of come back round to hit them, per the curse. Everything seems to come out wrong.
And also, I suppose as a 'creative' person maybe, I kind of also figured this was Jones's way of showing how sometimes the things you invent, as an artist or writer or what have you, end up coming out different to how you initially imagine them. After all, the novel is very much concerned with Polly's progress as a writer and as a creative young person generally.
These are definitely true aspects of what's going on here.
@ksfoxwald also made a pertinent observation about the chapter that I think I should include, although I'd not come across it before I had much of the other thoughts I will be putting down: "The lesson here seems to be that you can create people, but you can't determine who they will be. It's a bit of a metaphor for parenting that is reflected in Polly's relationship with her parents."
But back to "the discovery made her squiggle inside, in a way that could have been pleasant but was probably nasty."
The sentence struck in me with a particular sense of significance that I hadn't quite had before. I was then reminded of later in the book, when Polly finally realizes who the boy in her stolen photograph is:
"People changed as they grew old, that was true, but the difference between Mr. Lynn and the boy in the photograph was more than that. Polly thought of photos she knew---Granny as a girl, Dad as a boy . . . The boy in the photograph did not have the same look as Mr. Lynn at all. It was as if he was going to grow up in a different direction, a careless, light-hearted direction, into someone more like Leslie Piper."
And then I realized, the same thing goes for Sebastian Leroy. When Polly and Tom are first inventing Leslie, they are both thinking of Sebastian really. But what is also true, is that Sebastian is the way he is because of the Leroys.
"'Surely you understand, Polly! If they don't take him, they'll take me instead.'
Polly turned her eyes from his desperately glaring face . . . She thought of the way Seb had gripped her that time, outside the Leroys' London flat, and she did see that Seb had been afraid for most of his life."
And
"'Come here, Seb dear.'
. . . 'Who, me? Why?' said Seb.
'Silly.' Laurel smiled and beckoned. 'I shall need you if Morton loses.'
Seb walked slowly over to the swinging seat. There was a look of such utter horror on his face that Polly realized that this was what Seb had been afraid of all these years."
Even in Part 1 Chapter 3 when he is fourteen, Seb tells Polly very pointedly that he is planning not to go to hell, and in hindsight, we see that Seb's obviously hinting at Tom's fate and also signifying that the same could happen to him if he doesn't act accordingly.
Then Polly starts to write about Leslie for the first time, imagining a Sebastian-like figure all the while, but not having invented for Leslie Seb's particular circumstances.
And so I wonder if part of Polly's discomfort upon first meeting the real-life Leslie could also be due to a hidden realization that this cheerful, joking boy COULD'VE been the type of boy that Sebastian might become, only something got in the way.
I think this is also another aspect of the Tom/Seb/Leslie trio, and I've got more thoughts besides, but I've already spent far too long on this post and I am tired.
Is it possible that this has been touched on already? It seems so obvious now I've noticed it, but I don't know if it's been expounded on yet. I also haven't finished reading through all of the amazing Fire and Hemlock readalong posts from @ksfoxwald and @no-where-new-hero at this point (which I consider a great reference for untangling the themes of the novel along with DWJ's own essay on it).
God I love this book.
Sophie was almost awed. "You mean you jilted the Witch of the Waste?"
Howl cut himself another lump of cake, looking sad and honorable. "That is not the way to put it. I admit I thought I was fond of her for a time. She is in some ways a very sad lady, very unloved. Every man in Ingary is scared stiff of her. You ought to know how that feels, Sophie dear."
Get the Balance Right by Depeche Mode is so extremely Fire and Hemlock coded and the fact I've not yet said so on this here Site is astounding
Actually, you know what?? You know what??
Invisible by Duran Duran is also EXTREMELY Fire and Hemlock (although most people seem to associate it with Metal Gear Solid for some reason - idk I'm not familiar with the game)
Top Fire and Hemlock coded lyrics in order of appearance:
"(Quiet one) Living without choice / (Quiet one) Is a life without a voice"
"When you can't even say my name / Has the memory gone? Are you feeling numb?"
"Go and call my name / I can't play this game, so I ask again / Will you say my name?"
"(Hindsight) Is falling on my face / (Highlights) The shape of my disgrace"
When you don't here a word I say / As the talking goes, it's a one-way flow / No fault, no blame"
Actually, it's pretty much all of the song.
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Get the Balance Right by Depeche Mode is so extremely Fire and Hemlock coded and the fact I've not yet said so on this here Site is astounding
Will be #DWJ-posting every day until The Wound is healed stay tuned
i was reading through diana wynne jones' the tough guide to fantasyland and couldn't help thinking of my favorite idiot wizard taakko at this entry
The KIDS Act, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, will raise the risk for journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.
Contact your representatives, US folx. Yes, even if you're scared. Yes, even if you think it doesn't matter, even if you think they won't listen. Write an email if you can't make a call. Call after hours and leave a message. Call during office hours if you feel up to it, but do something. Call every day. Email every day. Fucking bother your rep. They work for you, not the other way around.
Your single call is not the point. The point is the aggregate of calls and emails. The point is that even "safe" Republicans don't feel really safe right now. The point is that "safe" Democrats are feeling pressure from the left due to the success of DSA candidates. You think they won't listen, and they'll probably try to make you think they're not, but they do, in the aggregate. The midterms have them running scared right now, and now is the time to shut this shit down.
Yes, again. Sorry it's not over. The people who really, really want to criminalize dissent are going to make us keep fighting this one. Sorry about that, but keep fighting.
I know why I've been so emotional now!! I've been fighting off a potential blood infection this whole time!!
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Ugh I need to vent (rant? yell? cry?) about The True State of Affairs for a moment, so uh warning for discussions of pedophilia and abuse and stuff
I read this novella a number of years ago, probably in high-school I want to say? Anyways I read it all in like, a single night. And so while I remembered about the sensitive themes, I don't think I fully recollected the way they were handled. I thought I would be fine.
(I was not totally fine. I ended up having to take a sedative at one point before I threw up lol. Almost didn't finish the re-read, but I couldn't stop thinking about it either, so on I went.)
I think what really disturbed me was the way Emily's POV was *so* sympathetic to Wolfram. Abd maybe that was kind of the point, idk... and of course there was sometimes the obligatory 'I don't approve of what Wolfram is doing,' but it was so frequently followed up by some sort of caveat or sympathy for Wolfram that just EWRGH irked me icked me ew ew ew.
And I also get that very likely, DWJ just didn't want to totally demonize this explicitly gay character due to the misconceptions surrounding gay men then (and still now) as inherently pedophilic, but it just was NOT executed as well as I (obviously mistakenly) remembered.
And I guess, in a way, Emily is sort of punished in the end for having been so sympathetic to Wolfram because now she's stuck with him in this stronghold surrounded by people* who will not distinguish her from her wardens.
*outside the stronghold, not within. She is, however, also surrounded by people within the stronghold who suck
But that also doesn't change the fact that in her POV she ends up depicting Kjarten as almost complicit in his own abuse?!??!? Which is so fucked up!!?!?!?!? GIRL WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK--
But maybe you're supposed to take it as an 'unreliable narrator' kind of moment?? That's what I'm telling myself to cope. GRRRRR
Idk maybe the eight days of DWJ podcast episode on this will be enlightening and maybe help me process this shit...
OK, one thing you need to understand here: DWJ is looking at a situation that has been, historically, very common in our world.
Kjartan isn't depicted as complicit in his abuse; he is depicted as a kid in a terrible situation who uses what tools he has to improve his situation or at least keep it from deteriorating. Sex work is very, very common among homeless teens, even today, so think about him in those terms. Kjartan was forced into survival sex and he got good at projecting the persona he needed to. Women have had to do this throughout history, too -- and have been blamed for it, and punished for it, and regarded as lesser for it.
Wulfram, for his part, is from a society in which this sort of thing happens and is not mainstream but is not actually punished. It's probably considered a bit sleazy. We don't know if he has a paraphilia which he doesn't have the resources to handle, or if kids Kjartan's age are locally considered adults, or what, but -- he is who he is, and he does what he does, and wants what he wants. Like the rest of us poor imperfect souls. And he has barely more power in the system than his prisoners do, so remember that bit.
Most importantly -- Emily, who also has to negotiate her situation as well as she can, has no contact with anyone except through Wulfram.
Whether it is wrong to sympathize with him in this situation is not a relevant issue; because her doing so is inevitable.
We are social animals and if we withhold our sympathy from those around us because they do or think or want things that we think are bad, or even that are objectively bad and do measurable harm, and have no power to remove ourselves into a more morally elevated social milieu, we isolate ourselves. It helps no one to do so, and harms us in body, mind, and spirit. We must have some kind of human connection, to survive; and at the end of the story, when the distant desperate fantasy love affair has ended and gone off without her, Wulfram's the only person available to connect with. They are stuck with each other.
In a situation with no good options, you have to settle for the least bad.
That's what Jones wrote the story about, all the ways in which people in bad situations adapt to them, and are tainted by them, and are dictated to by our needs as much as, and more than, by our natures. By the end of the story, our protagonist is performing very much as Kjartan did, only providing emotional work instead of sex work. Because what else can she do?
Compassion is a survival skill.
Oh no, I absolutely agree with all of this and understand this. Those were many of my initial thoughts when I first read the novella as well.
It's just...
When Emily writes:
"Lord, that kid was cruel! . . . I felt quite sick, and I was shaking all over. Cruelty is sickening. I suppose I should have been relieved that Kjarten knew enough to avoid contact with Wolfram's dreary soul, but I am afraid Wolfram is the one I am sorry for. Little swine."
Emily is still doing exactly what you just described. She is still villainizing Kjarten for using the tools at his disposal to cope in a situation where he has absolutely no power. And again, that is very probably the whole point of DWJ writing that passage, to show how Emily has begun to side with the people who have power over her (even subconsciously! Even in her own private writings!) as a means of survival where she very likely wouldn't in any other context, were she a free woman.
We should also not forget -- as DWJ, writing for children, absolutely never forgot and it's one reasons her books are so good and so ruthless -- that Kjartan is not a pure innocent victim, because Kjartan -- because kids and teens -- have agency. Kjartan has chosen to develop his survival sex technique and persona to keep himself afloat, and here he sees before him a chance to use it, not just to save himself, but to punish someone else, someone on the side of those using and imprisoning him, someone who would use him if he could. So he chooses to take it. He hasn't got much power but when he gets a chance, he uses it, even if the use is petty and mean.
Because people do that.
Almost certainly, Emily is thinking "little swine" and condemning him, in part, because she has never had an opportunity to do the same, and both resents and envies him for having even that much agency. She hasn't got any power to punish Wulfram. She is squeamish about seeing others suffer, even "bad people." Any ordinary kind-hearted person will respond to the sight of suffering, and she has probably always considered that a virtue, if she's thought about it at all. Here and now, the only power she has is to set herself as the moral superior of those around her, in her own mind.
But by the end of the story, even that has broken down, because if she sympathizes with Wulfram doesn't that make her a Bad Person, too?
And this is why there are no Bad People or Good People. There are only people, doing good and bad things under good and bad conditions, and if there are any moral powers out there, may they have mercy upon us all!
Definitely! Great novella, just deeply uncomfortable, as it should be--
(All that to say, I think I came off rather less charitable in my initial post than I would have liked... this is not my Rational Prose lol)
Ugh I need to vent (rant? yell? cry?) about The True State of Affairs for a moment, so uh warning for discussions of pedophilia and abuse and stuff
I read this novella a number of years ago, probably in high-school I want to say? Anyways I read it all in like, a single night. And so while I remembered about the sensitive themes, I don't think I fully recollected the way they were handled. I thought I would be fine.
(I was not totally fine. I ended up having to take a sedative at one point before I threw up lol. Almost didn't finish the re-read, but I couldn't stop thinking about it either, so on I went.)
I think what really disturbed me was the way Emily's POV was *so* sympathetic to Wolfram. Abd maybe that was kind of the point, idk... and of course there was sometimes the obligatory 'I don't approve of what Wolfram is doing,' but it was so frequently followed up by some sort of caveat or sympathy for Wolfram that just EWRGH irked me icked me ew ew ew.
And I also get that very likely, DWJ just didn't want to totally demonize this explicitly gay character due to the misconceptions surrounding gay men then (and still now) as inherently pedophilic, but it just was NOT executed as well as I (obviously mistakenly) remembered.
And I guess, in a way, Emily is sort of punished in the end for having been so sympathetic to Wolfram because now she's stuck with him in this stronghold surrounded by people* who will not distinguish her from her wardens.
*outside the stronghold, not within. She is, however, also surrounded by people within the stronghold who suck
But that also doesn't change the fact that in her POV she ends up depicting Kjarten as almost complicit in his own abuse?!??!? Which is so fucked up!!?!?!?!? GIRL WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK--
But maybe you're supposed to take it as an 'unreliable narrator' kind of moment?? That's what I'm telling myself to cope. GRRRRR
Idk maybe the eight days of DWJ podcast episode on this will be enlightening and maybe help me process this shit...
OK, one thing you need to understand here: DWJ is looking at a situation that has been, historically, very common in our world.
Kjartan isn't depicted as complicit in his abuse; he is depicted as a kid in a terrible situation who uses what tools he has to improve his situation or at least keep it from deteriorating. Sex work is very, very common among homeless teens, even today, so think about him in those terms. Kjartan was forced into survival sex and he got good at projecting the persona he needed to. Women have had to do this throughout history, too -- and have been blamed for it, and punished for it, and regarded as lesser for it.
Wulfram, for his part, is from a society in which this sort of thing happens and is not mainstream but is not actually punished. It's probably considered a bit sleazy. We don't know if he has a paraphilia which he doesn't have the resources to handle, or if kids Kjartan's age are locally considered adults, or what, but -- he is who he is, and he does what he does, and wants what he wants. Like the rest of us poor imperfect souls. And he has barely more power in the system than his prisoners do, so remember that bit.
Most importantly -- Emily, who also has to negotiate her situation as well as she can, has no contact with anyone except through Wulfram.
Whether it is wrong to sympathize with him in this situation is not a relevant issue; because her doing so is inevitable.
We are social animals and if we withhold our sympathy from those around us because they do or think or want things that we think are bad, or even that are objectively bad and do measurable harm, and have no power to remove ourselves into a more morally elevated social milieu, we isolate ourselves. It helps no one to do so, and harms us in body, mind, and spirit. We must have some kind of human connection, to survive; and at the end of the story, when the distant desperate fantasy love affair has ended and gone off without her, Wulfram's the only person available to connect with. They are stuck with each other.
In a situation with no good options, you have to settle for the least bad.
That's what Jones wrote the story about, all the ways in which people in bad situations adapt to them, and are tainted by them, and are dictated to by our needs as much as, and more than, by our natures. By the end of the story, our protagonist is performing very much as Kjartan did, only providing emotional work instead of sex work. Because what else can she do?
Compassion is a survival skill.
Oh no, I absolutely agree with all of this and understand this. Those were many of my initial thoughts when I first read the novella as well.
It's just...
When Emily writes:
"Lord, that kid was cruel! . . . I felt quite sick, and I was shaking all over. Cruelty is sickening. I suppose I should have been relieved that Kjarten knew enough to avoid contact with Wolfram's dreary soul, but I am afraid Wolfram is the one I am sorry for. Little swine."
Emily is still doing exactly what you just described. She is still villainizing Kjarten for using the tools at his disposal to cope in a situation where he has absolutely no power. And again, that is very probably the whole point of DWJ writing that passage, to show how Emily has begun to side with the people who have power over her (even subconsciously! Even in her own private writings!) as a means of survival where she very likely wouldn't in any other context, were she a free woman.
