Ciemno wszędzie, głucho wszędzie

So bear with me, because I know that Sarah Rees Brennan's latest books are satirising fantasy titles like Game of Thrones, but god there's a lot of Labyrinth in there. For instance...

Hmm, looking good ...

(Spoilers to follow)

The published narratives that Rae, Alice and Eric were reading were not objective accounts of events but instead constructed to create a deliberate narrative that effectively censors anything that doesn’t fit.

I think the two ways the “inside the book” world and the published narrative most visibly differ are in queerness/sexuality and any reference to our world. Rae and Alice have no idea that the Golden Cobra is from their own world. Meanwhile, the Cobra is not exactly subtle in his references to his own home (“Google Maps” the horse as one example). I think from this it can be inferred that the published narrative is skipping, paraphrasing or otherwise avoiding anything that would clue the reader in as to the portal fantasy nature.

Then there’s queerness and sexuality in general. The published narrative is presenting a very normative, traditional view of sexuality with chastity until marriage equated to heroic purity and promiscuity equated to villainy. Rae even explicitly notes this when she’s reflecting on the sex scene between Rahela and the king, with the weasel worded passive language ignoring that Octavian is just as involved as Rahela.

Meanwhile, the published narrative also conceals queerness. Lia’s entanglements with other women as well her true feelings towards male attention are absented. The wedding night between Key and Lia is left unclear, to preserve the image of heterosexuality. Interestingly, it’s also left unclear as to whether Marius had a sexual relationship with Rahela’s mother — Eric assumes this to be the case. That ambiguity also helps the published narrative portray Marius as (presumably) heterosexual.

The only clues we have to whether queerness is mentioned at all in the published narrative is the reader speculation that Fabianus is queer coded and Alice referring to rumors of a romantic relationship between Marius and the Cobra. In the first case, it’s clear that the published narrative is not explicit about Fabianus’s bisexuality. In the second, it’s unclear if the rumor’s Alice refers to are from within the narrative or from debates among readers.

Edit — I just thought of another obvious example! The published narrative presents Lia as a naive ingenue by hiding her motives and even some actions. For instance, Lia is shown weeping over the ruined dress, but Lia is not shown to be the one who destroyed the dress!

Doylistically, I wanted to conjure up the fannish experience of having theories about hints in stories… thus it had to be a book with layers and secrecy. Alice and Rae and Eric all have different thoughts and know different things about the books, and by exchanging those thoughts they come closer to the truth. But no reader reads quite the same story as any other, and that’s literalised as we see all three of them reading three different (changed) stories.

For example, the common experience of thinking there’s chemistry between characters and fearing that’s all it will ever be due to it being a queer pairing. I thought it would be nice to validate that feeling, even for stories where that IS all it would ever be (sorry to the most recently hurt by Stranger Things!) and tell them they weren’t wrong to see it. But for those in book, it’s the also-common and sometimes terrifying experience of ‘you and your friend, could there be something there?’ Books sometimes just do have real world shoutouts in them. The Time of Iron series was partly inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire and its fandom. The series has a reputation for being grimdark I don’t think it entirely deserves and it does do whimsy. Currently I am watching House of the Dragon, rolling around in glee and torment because I have read the faux-history it’s based on, and I know one of the characters - Oscar Tully by name - has relatives called ELMO AND KERMIT TULLY. So… the horse named Google Maps could be canon. You don’t know.

I know, of course, but that’s different.

I was also thinking about adaptation, for what’s an adaptation but a changed story? In A Song of Ice and Fire, the characters Renly and Loras are implied to be gay. In the TV adaptation Game of Thrones, they’re explicitly so. But also the ASOIAF books are not finished and the GOT show is, so there are many reveals made in the show that aren’t in the books yet—and may never be. One character gets resurrected in the book who isn’t resurrected in the show. Another character is resurrected in the show, but as of his latest appearance in the books, he’s dead in the snow. He’s been lying dead in the snow for 15 years. So who is doomed, and by which narrative?

In the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation book, during the climactic moment the hero Wei Wuxian proclaims (very explicitly) gay love to his love interest. In the Untamed TV adaptation (because of government rules and not creator decisions) during the climatic moment the main characters have very little to do except stare at the absolute mastermind vs mastermind shenanigans unfolding before them. In the Vampire Chronicles books, vampires can’t have sex so their sexuality remains fairly ambiguous for at least a while. In the AMC show we have gay vampire sex in the pilot.

And then, there’s narrative tricks. All stories use them. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd hides who the murderer is when they’re in very plain sight. In A Song of Ice and Fire, Ned should be thinking of a very treasonous secret he has constantly while in the presence of the king. But they get elided to serve the story better. So indeed… what is the purpose of this story, who is it by, who is it for… and what is its effect meant to be…