Author: geoffreybelliott

A Robin Hobb Rereading Series, Entry 493: Assassin’s Fate, Chapter 34

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Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series soon.

An excerpt from a letter from Chade to Fitz about Shrewd and the costs of necessary secrecy precedes “Smoke.” The chapter opens with Fitz reaching out to the Fool, thinking the latter dead. Fitz steels himself to leave his friend behind in search of his daughter and is surprised when the Fool lashes out, thinking that the Servants have come for him again. Fitz helps the Fool along, assisted by Lant, and receives report of events. Brief conference about how to proceed is taken, and the Fool offers guidance as to where Bee might be held.

Probably a little light…
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The group finds its way into a torture chamber, Fitz aghast at its contents and implications as he searches among the present prisoners for his daughter. Progress is interrupted by a pair of guards who converse as they make a casual sweep of the area; after they have left, Fitz’s search for Bee continues, uncovering Prilkop. Fitz continues, moving with some caution against the alert status of Clerres, and he becomes aware of fire at work in the stronghold. Fitz and Perseverance charge ahead, the latter passing the former and claiming Bee.

As Fitz makes to begin exfiltration with Bee and his other companions, Wolf-Father rejoins him, making brief report. And in the moment of openness, Fitz begins to be suborned by Vindeliar’s magics, beguiled to take himself and the children to the Servants.

The present chapter offers some explanation for the presence of Wolf-Father with Bee, and I find myself easily able to imagine Nighteyes commenting that “This is pack.” The explanation carries some implications and raises some questions, of course:

  • Is Nighteyes unique or rare among wolves in leaving not only an echo of himself in Fitz but a lingering spirit that has agency and can move from person to person? And if he is not, what does that say about the packs of wolves that exist in the world the Realm of the Elderlings inhabits? And what of other animals?
  • To what else can such a spirit as Nighteyes is attach?
  • What other spirits are at work in the Realm of the Elderlings? (The beings in the Skill that Fitz encounters from time to time, not only those of his Skill-using kin dead or gone into dragons.)
  • Are spirit-like manifestations (eg, the apparitions stored in memory stone) merely echoes, or are they, too, potentially lingering sentiences that can “attach” to people and places with agency? (There is some suggestion of this in the interactions between Rapskal and Tellator, for example.)

Such things–and I make no claim that what I note above is exhaustive rather than a few minutes of not-too-deep thinking–are the kinds of things that send fandoms scrambling, I know, and might with some properties open space for other authors (and adaptors; I admit that my recent roleplaying work has me thinking in such ways) to write such that the holes are filled and implications traced out. Whether that is a good thing or not is a matter of perspective; Tolkien’s comments about bones and soup come to mind for one perspective, but my own completion- and lore-seeking self rapidly presents another. (I also acknowledge the existence of but do not care for at least one more: “Who cares?”) I point so much out not because I necessarily do want any of those gaps filled (or, more likely, patched over; I’ve seen how such things can go) but because they are useful reminders that such gaps do not detract from the quality of a work. Rather, they are necessary products of writing that reflects the messiness of reality; while there may be answers to all questions in the readerly world, none of us has all of them, so writing that strives for verisimilitude–such as Hobb’s–should also leave at least things open.

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Delving Deeper into Hanlon

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For whatever reason, I have been feeling somewhat historically minded recently (insofar as I’m able to do that; I’ll admit to limitations on my perspective). As such, for the overtly educational portion of this week’s session, I gave a brief gloss of the origins of the tabletop roleplaying game, as attested by Lawrence Schick, Gary Alan Fine, and Daniel Mackay. I know there are other, more recent sources; I have not had the opportunity to review them yet, or even to get hold of copies thereof, although I do have some concerns about some of which I am aware. Publishers have interests in how their products present them, after all, as I’ve discussed. Still, for a few minutes talking to a few middle-school-age children, what I had handy was enough; I can always tack more onto my scholarly somedays at need.

This isn’t quite the setup I work with, no.
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In terms of gameplay, the party continued on from where it had been at the end of the previous session: not far into the dungeon through which the players’ characters are crawling. Player absences told upon the group as they encountered one of the most formidable opponents D&D presents: a locked door. Try as they might, they could not break down the door that confronted them, and after pretty much every player had failed both of the rolls made available to them to have their characters receive the necessary information to proceed, an allied NPC, once asked for aid, opened the door for them to move forward.

I know that it’s not ideal to have the party be rescued in such a way. Normally, I would not have gone with it. But, again, three of the seven regular players were absent, one of whose characters has skills particularly suited to the task of unbolting the door; it was an unusual situation, and all of the players had made several attempts through different skills and approaches. They gave it the traditional college try, so I threw them a line. Of course, doing so also fed into some of their (incorrect) ideas about the allied NPC…and I’ll admit that I didn’t do a lot to discourage that thinking. It will make the revelation of the truth much more entertaining when, at long last, it happens.

But they’ve got to get through the dungeon before that can happen for them.

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Another Rumination on Sousa Day

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Once again, a day has come that bandsfolk in the United States do well to commemorate. A bit of a pun, March Fourth associates in some communities and in some times with John Philip Sousa, the March King, long-time conductor of the US Marine Corps Band and composer most notably–though hardly exclusively–of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The eponym of a prominent bandhall, of a bridge, of a marching instrument in wide use, and of what is often considered the highest award that can be given to a high-school bandsperson, Sousa continues to exert influence on the musical culture of the United States and on the broader culture enfolding the same.

The guy in the middle gets it…
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It is a small thing, to be sure. I do not have the numbers ready to hand, but I’d wager that current and former bandsfolk are in the minority here. (My experience is skewed by having been a bandsman from a family of bandsfolk and by passing that tradition forward; Ms. 8 is a tubist and an award-winning one already.) Bandsfolk are not prominently represented in popular culture; bands are present, sure, but they rarely appear as central groups, their members as central characters. (There are exceptions, I know; Mr. Holland’s Opus and Drumline come to mind, dating me, and The Music Man also suggests itself. But two movies and a musical out of thousands of each…) They are part of the background of the world, as music itself often is, and this does lead to some tendency towards disdain for them. (Again, there are exceptions. I am aware of this. I am also aware of what the word “tendency” means.)

As often, though, I might refer to things many others have stated more eloquently than I: remove music, even as background, from the world, and it is far less good a place. For there to be music, there must be musicians–even in an era prone to AI slop and “good enough.” And for musicians to be, there must be the structures that allow them to be; there must be those who study and teach the making of music, and there must be time and space for the development of the skills and muscle memory–because the performance of music is a thing of muscles–that allow enough proficiency that the notes can be known and hit, again and again.

On this day, as much else goes on in the world, no little of it worth mourning, it might be well to reflect on such things and to work towards an existence that does more to promote them than to offer yet more over which to sorrow. Those who are grieving have their right to do so; I do not say that they should not. But those who are not grieving might find good use for their thoughts in such things. And perhaps both might well be done, there being elegies and requia and dirges aplenty.

There are worse things for which to wind a horn.

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Another Rumination on Texas Independence Day

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Today is, of course, the anniversary of the declaration at Washington-on-the-Brazos of the independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico. It is something I acknowledge, of course, and not only because it is good for me as a professional to do so as a signification of my participation in the broader community of this state (despite not being a native, which disqualifies me from being a “True” Texan). Despite the many negative stereotypes about the state and its people–and there are reasons the stereotypes exist–I do continue to claim my Texanness, to assert that I am and belong here.

I remember…
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And why should I not? I have lived more years than not in the Hill Country; it’s where I grew up, it’s where my family is, it’s where my name is on the walls and where it remains spoken. It is where I have worked these many years, and it is where the work I do conduces to the health of the broader community, including children, the indigent, business leaders, and visitors in and out of season. It is where I have put down roots once again and from where I picked them up a time or two. And while there are problems to be found in it, as there are in all places, there is also much good, and if it is to our discredit that the bad is often elided or ignored, it would very much be to our discredit were we to set aside the good that is (and for nerd communities, no less; Texas has given rise to no few artists in several genres on whose work much hangs).

At its best, Texas–like many other places, to be sure–is a promise and an endorsement. Nobody is always at their best; I certainly am not, and I do not think it would befit for me to expect the state of which I am a part to be such if none of us who live here can claim to be so. But, damn it, I and others try, and even trying, we can do a damned lot of good.

(Just so you know, I’m not abandoning the Robin Hobb reread; it’ll resume next week. Too, yes, I know this posted later than usual. It was busy. But I didn’t forget.)

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Hoping for More Hanlon

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Continuing on from last week, at the end of which session the party had reached the doorway to the dungeon through which I meant to have them crawl, the middle-schoolers’ characters proceeded inward. Following the pre-written materials I have been using (with some small emendations to get around some of the metagaming I’d noticed brewing), the party soon found themselves confronting unfamiliar situations, the players trying to figure out how to get their characters to do what needed doing to move ahead in confidence. They were not as successful in that as might have been, rather comically getting in each other’s way out of concern about what lay ahead and a desire to “do something cool.” But it was progress, nonetheless.

Not far off, honestly…
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One of the things that dungeon-crawls traditionally do is present players and their character with puzzles to solve. This is true in video games, as the various Legend of Zelda games attest. It’s true in Dungeons & Dragons, as well, with many of the titular dungeons being maze-like in their presentation even before traps that must be avoided and doors that require cunning and insight to open are put on offer. Puzzle- and problem-solving such as working against such devices require are themselves often articulated as major educational goals; the TEKS standards for grade 6 make much of such things, for example. Dungeon-crawling, then, is inherently an educational exercise, so I didn’t have to do much to bring in the overtly educational this time…but one thing that I have done, both this session and previously, is start to use more complex and richer vocabulary, sending the players to the dictionary for information about what the words mean. (The game meets in a library. Using its resources suggests itself as another valid educational end.) Between the two, I think I have the explicitly educational covered decently enough.

Honestly, so much echoes my own experience. I might have noted here before, and I have certainly noted elsewhere before, that a good part of what drew me into my formal study was the media to which I had been exposed and in which I was conversant as I moved from high school to college and from undergraduate to graduate study. I took Old English early in my master’s program because I was frustrated at the end of my undergraduate work by being almost able to read and make sense of it, for example, and I had that sense of familiarity in part because I had been the particular type of nerd that I was then. (I’m not quite the same taste, now, but whiskey has a richer flavor twenty-five years after being put into the barrel, so that’s to be expected.) I learned words because I saw them used and did not know what they meant, so I looked them up. (Having the spellings helped; a dictionary’s not as handy when the spelling’s uncertain, something that was long a point of vexation for me with my parents.) I don’t think that any of the kids at my table will be English majors or go out for the professoriate, but I do think they benefit not only from the exposure to new vocabulary, but also from doing the work of finding what it means for themselves.

It’s something that will serve them long after we have parted ways.

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A Robin Hobb Rereading Series, Entry 492: Assassin’s Fate, Chapter 33

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Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

Another prophecy, one seeming to summarize the Tawny Man trilogy, prefaces “Candles.” The chapter, proper, opens with Bee watching Motley depart and listening to her fellow captives. Conversation among them lapses, and Bee confers with Wolf-Father within. She contemplates what she knows and questions her own perceptions of reality, and she voices her beliefs aloud.

I do so love this artist’s work.
Katrin Sapranova’s The Library, here, used for commentary

In the ensuing silence, Bee employs her skills and the tokens she has purloined to escape her cell and stalk through Clerres. Thinking of her mother and her mother’s determination, Bee douses the shelves of Clerres’s library with oil and prepares to set them aflame. Vindeliar’s magic touches her, and she uses the connection thus made to gain information, but her own intent is revealed. The library begins to ignite, and Bee rushes to set more fires. Once they are well stoked, Wolf-Father urges her to flee, and she does.

The prefatory materials for the chapter once again catch my attention, leaving me to note with some interest that the prophet cited reports dreaming twice of Fitz and the Fool victorious at Aslevjal and seven times of them failing. One might think that a more than one-in-five chance of success would prompt more effort to interdict than it appears to have received; Ilistore did not seem so well supplied from Clerres as she might have been. Admittedly, concerns of time factor into such reckonings; how long she had been on Aslevjal is not entirely clear, and it might well have been long. Still, it is striking that the Fool’s success was so little anticipated, given the odds implied.

As to Bee’s actions in the chapter: I am sympathetic to the underlying motivations. The library at Clerres has been used to perpetuate evil, on her and on the broader world she inhabits. It, as much as anything else, is the source of Clerres’s power. Undoing Clerres means undoing the library–and yet, being who I am, I wince at even the fictional depiction of book-burning, both because of the historical overtones and for other reasons I have addressed once or twice before. (It’s been a while since I’ve thought about those days. I wonder what it says about me that such is so.) But that I am uneasy does not mean it is poorly written or poorly done; indeed, the fact of the discomfort may be taken as a sign of the writing’s success.

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A Robin Hobb Rereading Series, Entry 491: Assassin’s Fate, Chapter 32

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Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

An excerpt from another dream journal precedes “A Way In,” which begins with Fitz and his companions waiting for Motley to return. They confer and watch the dwindling crowd uncertainly, marking the gossip they can make out. Perseverance sees Motley return, and the group hastens to take the bird back in. Fitz reaches for Motley through the Wit and is rebuked, but he receives Bee’s message and begins to formulate a plan.

Something like this looms…
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Fitz and his companions begin to enact Fitz’s plan, reducing their carried burdens as they prepare to infiltrate Clerres via its sewage outlet. Under cover of darkness, they proceed, going quickly to the water and slowly thought it. Fitz offers yet one more chance for his companions to turn aside and is once again refused. They proceed up Clerres’s waste-release into the depths of its fortress, finding a body, a guard who soon becomes nothing more than another body, and the Fool, beaten and showing no signs of life.

The present chapter makes the note that Fitz “looked out at the sea and thought of El, the harsh god of those waters. I had seldom prayed, but that night I offered El both my prayers that he would spare those who accompanied me, and curses for him if he took them from me” (588). Veneration of El in the Six Duchies has been mentioned before, as might be expected, and I comment on it here and elsewhere. The comments made about said veneration earlier in the Realm of the Elderlings novels depict overt prayer to El as a dangerous thing to undertake; that Fitz does so here seems a combination of his desperation and yet more of the foreshadowing of which the Realm of the Elderlings novels make much. Given the looming end of the novel, and from the vantage of rereading, I think it both.

I’ll note in the present chapter also a crass joke at work: Fitz and his companions are going up Clerres’s ass to wreck the place. That they come in by way of an emptying sewer, one described more than once earlier in the series as discharging from a chamber that fills during the day and is evacuated at intervals by receding water, makes the jape clear; Clerres, something of a porcelain throne, acts as if it fills and flushes a toilet, voiding itself. And, well, if there is still medievalism at work in the Realm of the Elderlings at this point, a story of Edmund Ironside comes to mind as a possible reference, here. (For more of a stretch on that point, so does a similar story about Uesugi Kenshin.) Yes, it’s scatological. Yes, it’s puerile. Yes, it’s scurrilous. But none of that means it isn’t there, and none of that means the work cannot be of quality; even Shakespeare makes such jokes, after all, and Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale is little but such a joke. I think Hobb can get away with it once or twice if such company can.

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A Very Special Hanlon Message

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As noted last week, this week’s session of the Dungeons & Dragons game I am running for middle-school-age students at the public library had to start with resetting expectations for player behavior at the table. I solicited players’ opinions and understandings, made my position on the matter clear, and reminded those at the table that participation is both entirely voluntary and predicated on helping to make things a good experience for everyone at the table, both in-character and our of character. It went reasonably well; the prospect of being removed from the table had something of a sobering effect on all in attendance, myself included.

Add some dice and voila!
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There was another event worth noting, and more important to me: the session coincided with Ms. 8’s twelfth birthday. I was, as might be expected, pleased to be there for it (and not in the hospital with her, as happened on her first birthday). My wife had made arrangements for a number of nice things to happen for our girl, and it was gratifying to see them occur. Of particular note was the addition to her gaming setup; she received dice and a dice mat for use in my game and, it may be hoped, in others. The delivery of cupcakes (complete with dragons and fire) on a fancy stand was another highlight; that the cupcakes themselves were tasty was an added bonus.

I do look forward to the continuing program. There is a waitlist for it, now, and some discussion about mentoring others to run their own games. I welcome the opportunity, and I hope that I will be equal to it.

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A Robin Hobb Rereading Series, Entry 490: Assassin’s Fate, Chapter 31

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Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

A missive from Nettle to Withywoods indicating her desires for the property precedes “The Butterfly Man.” The chapter, proper, begins with Capra leaving Bee in her cell once again. Bee and Prilkop confer about her prophetic visions, and Prilkop sorrows over her relative lack of tutelage before informing her about the Catalyst each Prophet has. To Bee’s dismay, Prilkop posits that Dwalia was her Catalyst; he also remarks on his own work as a Prophet and his interactions with Ilistore. Prilkop further urges Bee not to destroy Clerres as she well might, citing its historical archive as a treasure worth preserving and noting the many not directly concerned with the Servants who would nonetheless suffer for her ending the Servants’ reign.

Here we go again…
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As discussion between Bee and Prilkop continues, Bee inveighs against the Servants and their depredations upon her and her people. Prilkop urges her towards the greater good even so, and further conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Beloved, clad in the butterfly cloak and so largely hidden from sight. Capra soon arrives in search of Beloved, and he is captured. As he is exposed to view, Bee recognizes Beloved, and she watches as he stabs Capra twice before being beaten again. Capra issues orders regarding Beloved and Prilkop before losing consciousness, and the surrounding guards depart to enact them.

In the guards’ absence, Prilkop and Bee confer again. They are soon interrupted again, this time by Motley, who claims to have been sent by Perseverance. Wolf-Father urges Bee from within to give a message to the bird–“A way out is a way in”–which she does with uncertain hope.

The present chapter is another short one, some thirteen pages in the printing I’m rereading; the last was a scant nine. Narrative pacing appears to be accelerating, which is not unexpected (even without the advantage of rereading the text); the end of the novel and the series of which the novel is the last entry (at this time; there has been some mention that more may be coming, but the other extant Realm of the Elderlings material of which I’m aware seems all to be in the past from this point in milieu) approaches, so it makes sense that things would pick up speed. Rushing downhill, as Freytag’s model is often presented, does usually see faster movement near the end.

The present chapter also brings up the idea of the butterfly effect once again. One of the major themes that emerges from the Realm of the Elderlings corpus is that small actions matter. Little things matter, both in themselves and because they add up over time. Hobb expresses as much many ways across the novels, ways that can be traced and explicated (although I have yet to do so, another scholarly someday I hope I might be able to address at some point), and I find myself thinking that her doing so is another way in which she signals her alignment with the Tolkienian tradition of fantasy literature (despite her many divergences from it). The Professor makes much of the importance of little people doing little things to big effect, and while he’s hardly alone in doing so, his influence remains clear–although, again, Hobb ranges far afield from Middle-earth in the Realm of the Elderlings.

I’ll note, too, that Prilkop does make some valid points in his conversation with Bee. There is value in having access to a large historical archive, and there are people who would be affected by things happening to Clerres who have nothing directly to do with the evils Clerres has perpetrated. But it is also the case that the historical archive is not a neutral thing; its recorders have their biases and impose them, knowingly and not, into the records, and access to that archive is far from even. And it is also the case that those who have nothing directly to do with the evils of Clerres nonetheless benefit from them and do, if at some remove, contribute to them. There are degrees of culpability, of course, and there are legitimate questions to ask about how much must be removed to ensure the eradication of evil…but that the eradication is needed should not be one of them.

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Another Rumination on Presidents’ Day

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Here again, I find myself thinking about a national observance in the United States and thinking back about what I have said about it before. (I do that a lot, as those who have read me at any length can attest. One of the better things about such informal publication as I get to have is that I have the luxury of building on ideas over time, something that more formal venues do not always allow or encourage.) There’s been a lot of change in the year since I wrote on the topic, so much that it’s often hard to track; even the more limited set of changes that I address in my primary line of work take a lot of doing to keep abreast of, and I rarely have time to look much further afield than that.

…something about holla?
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Some of that, of course, may be ascribed to my personal limitations. I am the man I am, trained as I have been trained and scrambling to adapt to what presents itself to me, both in the day job and outside it; there are things at which I know to look and things I don’t know I need to look at, even if they do bear in on me. I’m not disclaiming my responsibilities in this; I acknowledge my limitations.

That much noted, I find myself once again of mixed mind regarding the observance. It’s not just this observance, of course; I have a long-running unease with such things, being not much of a celebratory person. While it is the case that I do have an appreciation for ceremony and pageantry, it is also the case that I like to watch it from a distance rather than to be immersed in it; I’d rather quietly observe than participate. (I suppose so much is true for a lot of things in my life, for better or worse.) At present, I am in the middle of my busy season; that I am makes it hard to pay attention to things that are not right in front of me. (There is some wiggle room in “in front of me,” as might be imagined. But some isn’t a whole lot, and it’s certainly not all.) At most, this time, there’s a slight variation in the course of my week due to the federal holiday; things being closed that are does force some adaptation. But it’s only some; for the most part, I have to go on like it’s any other day.

I doubt I’m the only one for whom so much is true.

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