movies, fantasy

Revisiting Stardust

Last weekend, I revisited the movie Stardust, which is one of my all-time favorites, as well as the ultimate example of that romantic fantasy road trip structure. I hadn’t watched it since I initially started developing that theory and used it to help map out the structure, so it was interesting to revisit.

First, to address a related issue: I’m aware of the disturbing allegations against the author of the book the movie was based on and don’t want to promote him. I’m not even sure I’d be able to read his books right now without being a bit uncomfortable. But I look at the movie as being its own entity. A movie is a collaborative effort involving hundreds of people. He didn’t write the screenplay, and the screenplay veers fairly significantly from the book in a number of ways. I’ve found that the things I like most in the movie aren’t in the book. The book doesn’t really fit the romantic fantasy road trip that well and is structured differently. So, I’m not letting the author of the book the movie is based on being an alleged creep ruin one of my favorite movies for me.

One thing I noticed was that the protagonist doesn’t meet the love interest/traveling companion until 28 minutes into the movie, which is approximately one-quarter of the way through. That’s pretty common in most of the movies that fit this trope, which is interesting, given that in a romance novel, you generally want the hero and heroine to meet as soon as possible, preferably in the first three chapters — if not the first chapter. These stories come closer to fitting the Hero’s Journey structure, in which the traveling companion/love interest is part of the “new world” the hero enters in the threshold crossing that comes when he takes on the quest. That usually is at about the 25 percent mark. It also fits the “Save the Cat” structure, in which the break into the second act and the meeting of the B-story (romance) character happens at the 25 percent mark, with the hero taking decisive action toward the goal and meeting the love interest at that point.

In this movie, we spend the first quarter of the movie with a bit of a prologue showing our hero’s origins, then we see the life he’s living and the fact that there’s something he wants that we as the audience can tell is not what he needs — he’s in love with a village girl whose only interest in him comes from her knowing she can manipulate him and get what she wants. We also get the setup of the big-picture plot in the magical world, with the king launching the ruby into space and declaring that the prince who finds it will win the crown. Then the ruby knocks a star out of the sky. Tristan finds his opportunity when he spots the falling star and swears to the girl that he’d go into the magical land on the other side of the wall to bring the star to her. His goal is born when she says if he brings her the star before her birthday, she’ll marry him — but his romantic rival is also planning to give her a ring, so if Tristan isn’t there with the star by then, she’ll marry the other guy (a young and unrecognizable Henry Cavill). Then we get the setup for the antagonist, with the witches planning to go after the fallen star, and we get Tristan learning about his history and getting the tools he’ll need to go to the magical land where the mother he’s never known lives.

The movie spends the next quarter on the phase I call “bickering,” as he and the fallen star, who turns out to be the woman Yvaine, travel together. She’s not at all keen on being presented as a gift, but he has a way to get her back home in the sky that he promises to give her if she’ll come with him as proof that he’s retrieved the fallen star. But a lot of this section is taken up by what the antagonists are doing, as the princes continue killing each other until they’re down to two and they both set out to find the ruby. Meanwhile, we see what one of the witches (an absolutely delicious Michelle Pfeiffer in a very different fantasy role from what she played in Ladyhawke) is up to in her quest for the star.

Which brings us to the midpoint, when one of the princes, Tristan, and Yvaine all show up in the trap set by the witch. This is the part I call “Attack,” and when Tristan and Yvaine escape together, we start to get the Bonding portion, where they start to get to know each other and find things they like about each other. In general, the bickering phase is when they’re focused on what they don’t like about each other, then surviving the attack together forces them to look at each other again, so they start to find things they like about each other. And there’s dancing. I’m not sure why there’s dancing at this point in so many stories. I had a friend who used to joke that the dancing in the Disney movies was a metaphor for sex, so she found it hilarious when Aurora says, “I don’t even know your name,” after the “Once Upon a Dream” dance in Sleeping Beauty. In the Hero’s Journey, this is a part called Seizing the Sword or Reward, which is often a bonding time. Dancing together requires trust and synchronization, so it’s a good visual shorthand for a growing bond if the characters can move as one.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I love this movie so much. I think it’s the combo of fantasy, romance, humor, and adventure. The main character has a solid growth arc. It’s a coming of age story — as the narrator tells us, it’s about how a boy becomes a man. There are secret identities and revelations. The villains get their comeuppance. People who’ve been separated are reunited. The cast is pretty astonishing. Even some of the minor roles are played by recognizable people, in some cases because they became famous later. Robert De Niro isn’t the sort of actor you expect to see in this kind of movie, especially not in that kind of role, but he seems to be having an absolute blast.

One fun thing about this viewing is getting to see something like Rydding Village. The village scenes at the beginning and end of the movie were filmed in the village that was the starting point for my mental model of Rydding. Once I started writing, I added, subtracted, rearranged, and changed elements, but my starting point was this village in the Cotswolds. I watched a lot of videos from people walking through this village to set the imagery in my mind, and it’s fun to see the village dressed for a different time period. Apparently, this village is often used for films, and years ago a film company paid for the village to get a central TV antenna on a nearby hill and underground cable from it to all the houses so there wouldn’t be any TV antennas in the town that they’d have to take down. Just about all they have to do to make it serve for anything from the 1600s through the Victorian era is dump dirt over the paved streets, change out the signs in shop windows, and add whatever set dressing they need for the story.

I have one personal connection to this movie. They based a lot of the look on the illustrations in the original illustrated version of the book, painted by Charles Vess. He was the artist guest of honor at the local science fiction convention back in Texas a bit more than ten years ago, and as the Mac expert on the convention staff, I helped him set up his new MacBook and get it ready for him to do his presentation. He gave me the chocolate from his guest gift basket, and I have a signed print of a painting he did for the convention. When I have a real office again, I’m going to get it framed to hang in there.

TV, My Books

Returning to The Office

I recently stumbled, quite belatedly, onto The Office Ladies podcast, in which Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (Pam and Angela on The Office), who became best friends during the process of making the series, do a rewatch and dish on the behind-the-scenes info about the making of each episode. I was aware that this existed, but I’m not really a podcast person. Then the episodes that are on YouTube showed up as “recommended” for me, and it turns out that they’re perfect for listening while I do Sudoku, crossword puzzles or online jigsaw puzzles. And that got me started rewatching the series to catch the things they mention. I did a partial rewatch a few years ago but got sidetracked before I finished it. Now I’ve been going back and looking for the things they point out in the podcast.

I actually watched this series in the first place because when they showed Pam in one of the promos, I immediately said, “That’s Katie!” and had to watch to see who this character was. The series premiered a couple of months before the first Enchanted, Inc. book was published, so it had already been entirely written and edited and the review copies had even been printed. That means The Office in no way influenced my series. But it was like seeing my own character that I’d already written come to life.

Her hair in the first few seasons is different than I see Katie. I think Katie looks more like Pam did in later seasons when she didn’t have the long, curly hair (which is ironic, given that I have long, curly hair), and Katie’s probably a bit spunkier than first season Pam. But Pam otherwise fit my description of her being like a girl next door, hair that wasn’t quite blond and wasn’t quite brown, eyes somewhere between green and blue, the kind of person whose description could apply to half the population. She even dresses a lot like I imagined Katie dressing. I guess first season Pam was more like Katie before she gets the job offer, when she’s in her original job at the beginning of the book, before she gains a bit more confidence and gumption from realizing that she has something special about her.

Then there was the office setting. I’d tried to do more of a workplace comedy at first, something a lot like The Office, but with magic — except there was no US The Office at the time, and I didn’t see the British version until later, so I didn’t have a good frame of reference. That idea mostly went by the wayside as the magical plots took over and the characters came to life. Before I decided that Merlin would be the boss and he’d actually be a good boss, I had the idea of the boss being someone more like Michael, mostly because I have had that boss (he even had the same first name). He wasn’t quite that stupid, but he was really big on the whole “having fun” thing and liked to have parties, only ours were usually after work, which forced us to stay late at the office or go to work-related events on weekends. He once came up with this whole incentive program where you set your goals for the week, and if you hit them, you got to leave early on Fridays, but then he’d plan either mandatory meetings or office parties for Friday afternoons, so you couldn’t actually leave. His whole life was the office, and he tried to make it that way for the staff.

I ended up not using that in the book. The only thing that remained from that original character was the bit about Merlin reading all the fad management books, though I ended up using that to show how he thought they were kind of dumb instead of constantly adjusting course based on which book the boss had just read. That came from a different job where the upper management of the company seemed to go through a different management trend every year. When I moved, I finally got rid of some of the stuff they handed out for each year’s theme.

Now I’m so far removed from the working world that I can look at this series almost as a fantasy show set in a strange, unfamiliar realm. It’s funny to look at it now and remember that feeling of deja vu as I remembered my former boss but also saw one of my characters come to life. It’s been about 20 years since they filmed the pilot episode, so Jenna Fischer has aged out of the role of Katie, but that was definitely the type I had in mind as I wrote.

Life

False Fall

This week, we’ve been having what the locals are calling “false fall.” The overnight lows have been in the 40s (some areas in the mountains have had freezes) and the afternoon highs have been in the low 70s. It’s the kind of weather we might get in late October in Texas, if we had a cold front. I’ve been loving it because this is one of my favorite kinds of weather. I can sit outside comfortably all day (though I need a jacket in the morning), hot tea feels good, and I can sleep under blankets without getting too hot. We’re even getting the first fall color. It’s just individual leaves turning red and gold, but it’s a hint of what’s to come.

It’s been even nicer when I see that it’s been in the 100s, with heat advisories, where I used to live. Apparently, that’s all due to the same weather pattern that’s blocking air from the north away from Texas and bringing it to us.

Alas, starting this weekend it’s warming up again. The locals are talking about going back to summer and “Satan’s armpit,” but even so, it’s still late September and early October weather for Texas, so it will still feel a bit like fall. to me I might not want to go for long walks at the hottest part of the day, but I also won’t need a heated throw and a jacket to eat breakfast on the back porch in the morning.

This is a big reason why I wanted to move. No 100s here. It is really muggy during the summer, which is weird because the temperatures are lower and the dew points are about where they were in Texas, but it feels a lot more humid. I went to hear the local TV meteorologist do a talk at the library and asked her about it. She said it may be that the layer of humid air is deeper here, and it may be that there’s less wind. The wind really may be it. I hadn’t realized how still it is here compared to Texas. A normal day in Texas had steady winds of about 10 mph. Here, that’s a pretty gusty day. Most days we may get a gentle breeze, at best. When the air doesn’t move, it feels a lot more humid, which makes it feel hotter. I’ve had to set my air conditioner a lot lower than I kept it in Texas just to take some of the humidity out of the air. My internal thermometer is still a bit off. I’ll look at the temperature on my weather station that has a sensor on my porch, and I’ll think I need to put on a sweater to go walking, then get started walking and immediately have to take it off. It always seems to feel warmer than I expect it to.

And this is one reason it was a good idea to wait until I’ve lived here a while before I make any decisions about buying a house. On paper, I might have said I wouldn’t need air conditioning here because it almost never gets to the temperature at which I turned on the air in Texas, but it does feel different here. I might be able to survive without AC if I had a whole-house dehumidifier (or one in each room), lots of ceiling fans, an attic fan, and no strong direct sun exposure, but it would definitely take the dehumidifier and fans. It does get cooler and drier at night. My AC never comes on at night, and I’m comfortable sleeping under blankets with an oscillating fan aimed at the bed (no ceiling fans in the apartment). I only need the AC for a few hours a day, and it’s a bit cooler than I’d like it to be, but the humidity is bad if I set the AC at a temperature that doesn’t require a sweater.

Now I’ll have to see what winter’s like. Statistics are showing that winters here are warming up more than the summers are, so the winters are getting milder faster than the summers are getting worse. When I was looking for a place to move, I was looking for a Goldilocks zone where it was just right, where I could get four seasons and less miserable summers without horrible winters. I’m excited about fall because that’s my favorite season and everyone is telling me it’s glorious here. I need to hurry and get a lot of writing done before it hits so I can take some time off to be outside as much as possible.

movies

Spoofing RomComs

Last weekend, I stumbled across a movie that looked like it might be fun because it was a spoof of romantic comedies, They Came Together. It’s basically giving romcoms the Airplane! treatment, and it was full of cast members I like, like Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Ed Helms and a bunch of other people you might recognize from NBC sitcoms like The Office, Parks and Recreation and The Good Place, plus some Saturday Night Live. I was curious to see what they did with this, since my whole Enchanted, Inc. series started as kind of spoofing chick lit/romcoms by adding magic, and then I did a more intense romcom spoof in book 7 of the series, Kiss and Spell, in which the characters were stuck in a magical romcom world in which they had to play out all the tropes.

The movie mostly mashes up You’ve Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally, with some Hallmark movie tropes thrown in and maybe some other things that I didn’t recognize. The gist of it is that a couple having dinner with friends tells the story of how they got together, saying that it’s just like one of those romantic comedy movies, and then we see the story play out — and it’s exactly like a romcom. She runs a cute little candy shop and he works for the big candy company that’s going to put her out of business. They hated each other when they first met but then when they run into each other in a bookstore they become friends, etc. Basically, all the romcom tropes play out.

I’m not entirely sure this movie works. I think part of the problem is that it doesn’t really interrogate the things it’s poking fun at, which means that it leaves a lot of potential on the table. For instance, there’s a sign at her candy store that all proceeds go to charity, and the only time we see her with a customer, she tells the customer the candy is free. So when she learns about the big corporation opening a candy superstore across the street and she visits her accountant to see how likely her business is to survive, I was expecting her accountant to look at her books and then point out that she might do better if she actually sold things and made a profit. I suspect that was more a dig at the Hallmark movies, where they never seem to actually sell anything in their bakeries/candy stores, rather than You’ve Got Mail, where we saw her ring up huge purchases, and I always want to point this out when the Hallmark heroines worry about getting driven out of business. Like, “Have you considered something wacky like charging for what you’re selling?”

It also doesn’t help that the movie doesn’t seem to be sure whether it’s going over the top with silliness or if it’s trying to be the spoof that’s still a good example of the thing it’s spoofing. I find spoofs work better if they’re still actually a good story under the silliness. For instance, Blazing Saddles has a decent underlying story even without all the wacky anachronisms and broad humor. You could make a serious western with that story of a black man sent to be sheriff of a racist town. The main characters are three-dimensional and interesting. In this movie, Paul Rudd mostly plays it straight, like he’s the leading man in a real romantic comedy. There’s even a scene that’s spoofing a typical emotional scene from this kind of movie in which he actually brought tears to my eyes. But Amy Poehler acts like she’s doing a Saturday Night Live sketch, playing basically a cartoon character who’s constantly winking at the audience. It’s like they’re in different movies even when they’re in scenes together. That makes it fail my romcom test of “do I want these characters to end up together?”

And while I’m nitpicking, it’s interesting that they’re genre savvy enough to say that their courtship was right out of a romcom, but during their courtship they don’t clue in to any of the things that are right out of a romcom.

There are a couple of things done late in the movie that are way over the top in a way that’s more uncomfortable than funny and seem entirely unnecessary, especially since these things don’t really go anywhere and pretty much ruin both main characters

I saw this one streaming on Peacock, and it’s amusing enough, but it gets pretty raunchy, so I wouldn’t recommend it as a first-date movie or something to watch with your parents. Now I need to watch Isn’t It Romantic, which is apparently also a romcom spoof. And I’ve found myself pondering how I’d do a romcom sendup, other than what I’ve already done.

movies

The Power of Story

A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling tired and stressed, so when I was looking for a movie to watch, I found myself turning to The Emperor’s New Groove, and I realized that it’s become my main comfort movie. I think I watch it at least twice a year. It’s short, sweet, and laugh-out-loud funny. But what makes it something I watch over and over again when I need to boost my mood? Since my life’s motto is “If it’s Worth Analyzing, It’s Worth Overanalyzing,” I put some thought into it.

For those not familiar with this movie, it’s an animated Disney movie that supposedly went through a really troubled production history and that flew under the radar to the point that I wasn’t aware it existed until I was babysitting for a friend and it was what the kid wanted to watch. It’s the story of a selfish, spoiled young Incan emperor who gets turned into a llama by his scheming advisor and has to rely on the peasant he’s planning to displace so he can build a water park for himself in order to get back to the palace and get turned back into a human. A buddy road trip story ensues.

One reason it’s a comfort movie is that it’s guaranteed to make me laugh. The humor is really densely layered, with a lot of subtle sight gags and sly references. No matter how many times I’ve watched it, I find some new little gem I never noticed before. There’s also fun in spotting and anticipating the running gags (“Wrong lever!”). I’m amused by the way they fit all the pop culture anachronisms into that setting. What would a diner look like in the ancient Andes? The whole movie is so funny and silly that by the end of it I’ve smiled and laughed enough that my mood actually changes.

But it’s also oddly profound, with one of the better redemption arcs I’ve seen. I guess it’s a spoiler to say that the emperor does get redeemed, but that’s pretty obvious for this kind of movie. I find that the transformation really works here because we see how hard it is for him to get over his selfishness and self-centeredness to gain empathy and realize that the world doesn’t have to revolve around him. The peasant (voiced by John Goodman) is a truly good person who is kinder to the emperor than the emperor deserves, but that sort of kindness is exactly what he needs. By the end of the movie, you believe the transformation really will work and last. The story is well structured to set it all up, with some full-circle callbacks so you can see how the character has learned and changed.

Meanwhile, the true villain gets a satisfying comeuppance and the slow-witted henchman figures out the difference between right and wrong. He’s never truly bad and messes up when he can’t go through with doing something wrong, but it takes him a while to come to the conclusion that working for the villain is a bad idea. On this latest viewing, I found myself thinking that I really need a Kronk, someone to cook me delicious food and do my bidding. (apparently, there’s a sequel about Kronk and a TV series, which I need to watch)

The good guys are truly good, honest people, and they don’t even try to harm the bad guys. The bad guys bring all their woes onto themselves. And yet it doesn’t feel like a black/white morality play, probably because the villain is humorously exaggerated and the good guy is just an honest working man, not any kind of great hero. He’s not trying to defeat a villain. He’s just trying to help someone who needs it and hoping that this help will change the emperor’s mind and spare his home.

The whole movie is like a warm hug, but with enough snark that it isn’t obnoxiously sappy. Now that I’ve realized it works as a comfort movie, I won’t have to scroll through the streaming service menus to decide what to watch when I’ve had a really stressful week and just want to laugh and feel good. I may need to get this one on DVD in case it ever gets removed from the streaming service or I decide to drop that service.

But thinking about this made me realize the power of story. This silly movie made for kids has a healing effect on me. It lightens my heart and makes me see the world in a more positive light. I can think of so many other stories, whether books, TV shows, or movies, that have a similar effect. They make me feel better about myself, make me want to be better, inspire me to create or dream. How many people have found and pursued their life’s calling because something in a story spoke to them and set them on that path? I’ve actually found that it’s the stories that might be deemed “fluff” that have had the biggest impact on me. It’s never the serious literary fiction that inspires me in a way that seeps into my real life. It’s the fantasy, the chick-lit, the animated Disney movies.

Considering this made me think about my work in a different way. I’ve always written to entertain, not necessarily inspire, but by entertaining the way I do, maybe I am a healer of sorts. I can make someone’s day better, comfort them, make them feel like a part of a community (even if it’s imaginary), inspire them to find whatever “magic” is within them, even if they’re utterly ordinary. Thinking this way about my work has been incredibly motivating. I’ll need to keep it in mind for those days when it’s hard to make myself open that document and start writing. I have to remember that someone out there needs this story, so I must write it.

movies

A New (to me) RomCom

Last weekend, I stumbled across a British romantic comedy on Peacock that I’d never heard of, Man Up. It has a really fun meet-cute premise, plus actual character growth arcs and one of the better “rom-com dashes” near the end that I’ve seen (if you’re going to throw in the cliche, you may as well have fun with it).

A terminally single woman gets mistaken by a man for his blind date at a train station. She’s getting tired of her sister nagging her to put herself out there and take chances to find love, so she impulsively decides to let him go on thinking she’s his date and goes off with him for a night out. But when she finds that she actually likes him she has to worry about how and when to own up to what she did and how he’ll react to the truth. And it turns out that he has his own hidden agenda behind this date as he’s recovering from a painful divorce.

My scoring system for romcoms is that they have to be both funny and romantic. I want to smile much of the way through and laugh at least one or two times, and I want to want the couple to get together rather than wanting to tell them to run. This one actually works on both counts. There are some cringeworthy moments where you feel secondhand embarrassment, but those are also really funny. Mixed in among the wackiness is some genuine emotional depth. There are times when you want to slap both characters, but then there are also moments when you want to hug them, and the ending is really satisfying because you feel like they’ve both learned something valuable and changed.

Lake Bell and Simon Pegg are the leads, and they seem to have tapped the National Theatre for the deep-bench supporting cast full of noted British actors. Even the room service waiter who appears in one scene is a recognizable actor. I’d say the tone is similar to Bridget Jones’s Diary, in that we have a somewhat hapless single woman in London who gets into scrapes, and it can get somewhat raunchy in moments. For the most part, it’s pretty grounded, like something you could believe would happen (apparently, the inspiration behind the script is that the writer was mistaken for someone’s blind date, and she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t immediately corrected the guy), but then there are a few events that go over the top in a rather delightful way.

As I said, I’d never heard of this film, but it was exactly the sort of thing I’ve been wishing existed that they don’t make nearly enough of. It’s about ten years old, so would have come out during a time when I could walk to a movie theater and went to movies frequently. I don’t know if it got a wide release in the US or if it was just badly marketed. It’s on Peacock now, so if you’re craving a romcom, this one might be fun. It got me started playing with romcom ideas, like how could you take that premise and add magic to it?

Books

More Cozy Cottagecore Fantasy

If you like my Rydding Village books and need something to keep you entertained while I write book 3 (you’ve already read book 2, right?), I have a recommendation for you: The Spellshop, by Sarah Beth Durst. I’ve known Sarah a really long time. I think we first met in 2006, and we’ve hung out together when we’re at the same events, bonding over curly hair and fantasy books. As soon as she started talking about this book, I was excited. It’s along the same lines as the Rydding Village books, in that it’s cottagecore cozy fantasy about a woman finding refuge in a magical village.

An extremely introverted librarian packs up as many books as she can and flees when a revolution sets the city and the library on fire. The only place she can think of to go for refuge is her childhood home on a remote island. She initially plans to just keep the spellbooks safe, since unauthorized use of magic is absolutely forbidden, but when she learns that the people on the island are suffering because the sorcerers who were supposed to be visiting to take care of things haven’t been, she starts looking up spells she can use to help. She can sell “remedies” to help the islanders, including the handsome merhorse farmer next door. She’s safe as long as no outsiders come to the island, but then a storm blows in a refugee who could put everything at risk.

This is a sweet, charming book about community that also gets into issues dealing with resources and how they should be fairly allocated, as well as questions about the difference between what’s right and what’s legal. There’s a subtle, gentle romance, but it’s mostly about the loner heroine learning to allow herself to be part of a community and to open her heart and explore her abilities. It’s like one of those women’s fiction books about the woman going to a village and opening a bakery/cafe/candy shop/bookstore, only in a magical world with flying cats, sentient spider plants, tree spirits, and merhorses.

It certainly makes me look at my spider plant differently, and I feel a little sad about having to rehome the giant granddaddy one when I moved. The one danger of reading this as a follow-up to Bread and Burglary might be that you’d be even hungrier, as there’s a lot of talk about jam and baked goods.

My Books

Release Day!

Bread and Burglary book coverIt’s a release day birthday for me. Bread and Burglary goes on sale today as an e-book. The paperback should be on sale at Amazon tomorrow (August 8), and it may take a little time to get picked up by other systems. Amazon changed their way of handling paperbacks since my last book, so my usual timing for setting up the paperback so it would come out at the same time as the e-book turned out to be off. I don’t currently have any plans for audio. That’s beyond my budget right now, so the series needs to either sell well enough for me to make the kind of money I’d need to invest in audio and show that it would be profitable in audio, or well enough for Audible to see it as a good bet and buy the audio rights.

I don’t have huge plans for my birthday, other than going out to buy some cake. I’d thought about having a big day out and playing tourist at one of the big historical sites nearby, but there’s a chance of storms this afternoon (both the outer bands of Debby and a front coming in), and I don’t want to be driving through the mountains in a thunderstorm, so I’m sticking closer to home. I’ll see what strikes my fancy once I leave the house. A book I put on hold at the library is in, so if it’s looking like a rainy afternoon, I may pick up a takeout lunch and spend the afternoon curled up with a book. The perfect birthday!

Enjoy the new book. In the coming weeks, I’ll post some behind the scenes stuff and maybe a recipe.

Books

New Library Benefits

One fun thing about the move is that now I have access to two local library systems, and they have different books from my old library system. Late last year, I read Mystic and Rider by Sharon Shinn, the start of a series, but my library system didn’t have the second book. I tried requesting it through Interlibrary Loan, but something must have gone wrong because even though several library systems in the metro area had it, they never got it in for me. But the library here did have it, so I finally got to read book 2, The Thirteenth House.

This series is structured somewhat like a romance series, with it being about a group of people, and each book has a different person from within the group as a main character. There’s also a different romance in each book. There’s an overarching plot about some political turmoil in the kingdom that this group is helping the king deal with, but this book could still function as a standalone. I barely remembered the first book, it’s been so long since I read it, and I was able to follow the story. It’s the sort of thing where you could follow the plot if you hadn’t read the earlier book, but you’d grasp more about the characters and situation if you had.

This book centers on the young noblewoman who has shapeshifting powers, and even though this seems to be a somewhat medieval-ish fantasy world (medieval technology, but it otherwise doesn’t seem to be pinned to any particular era from our history), this particular book has a very Regency vibe. It’s the social season, in which the nobles of the elite Twelve Houses of the kingdom each host big house parties and balls for the other nobles, who make the circuit of them all, along with some of the upper lesser nobles in each province, known collectively as the Thirteenth House. Our heroine is using her shapechanging abilities to impersonate her introverted sister and attend the social functions on her behalf. Meanwhile, the other members of the group are guarding the young princess, who’s making her big social debut. There are rumblings of threats from disgruntled lesser nobles, and the regent who would advise the princess if she became queen has been threatened. What complicates things for our heroine is the fact that she fell in love with this regent, and he with her, when she rescued him from kidnappers. The only problem is that he’s married. She’s never worried about social conventions before, but is this a social convention she’s willing to break? And if she does, could she lose out on another possible love?

This book is less of a “fantasy road trip” than the first one in the series, since they aren’t really on a quest, but they are on a journey as they travel around the kingdom. It’s fun seeing a lot of the conventions of the Regency romance placed in a magical world. The romance in this one is not one that could fit into a genre romance novel, and it provides an angsty contrast to the Regency-like fun in the rest of the plot. Romance readers might have issues with the relationship, but I would encourage you not to judge it without reading the whole book because it does work out in a satisfying way for the character, and there are some twists.

I really enjoy this kind of series structure, with the big-picture external plot that carries through the whole series and the individual romance plots in each book. We get to see the world and the characters through different eyes in each book since there’s a different protagonist. The main characters from the first book are secondary characters here, and we get to see how they’re progressing. Meanwhile, potential storylines are being set up for the other characters that I assume will play out in future books. This is what I’m trying to do with the Rydding Village series, though I’m sort of keeping Elwyn as a secondary heroine in all the books, so there’s the book heroine and then there’s Elwyn as the series heroine, and we’ll get both their perspectives in each book. The big picture plot will start to have a bigger effect starting in book three, which I’m gearing up to start writing.

fantasy

What Era?

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a very lazy Sunday and spent the afternoon lying on the sofa, watching history videos on YouTube. One came up that was about how most “medieval” fantasy is actually more based on the Stuart era, so 1600s through early 1700s. Of course, anything that combines history and fantasy is right down my alley, so I watched it, and I think he had some interesting points.

One thing he pointed out was that the kind of inn/tavern that’s common in fantasy fiction and in things like Dungeons and Dragons, like the Prancing Pony in The Lord of the Rings, is more of an 18th century coaching in than an actual medieval inn. The roasted potatoes or potato-laden stew they get in inns would be from the 1600s or later, since potatoes weren’t grown in Europe until then.

Then there’s clothing. The aesthetic of most fantasy clothing is more 16th century than medieval. Take the female Renaissance festival uniform of blouse, lace-up bodice, and skirt, which you also see in Disney fairy tale depictions and lots of fantasy art. That’s mid-1600s, not medieval. In the medieval era, women were more likely to wear one-piece dresses. Men’s fantasy clothing also dates later. The Hobbit outfits with their frock coats and waistcoats are late 1600s and beyond — and it’s not just the costuming for the films. That’s what Tolkien described in the books. The tall boots with cuffed tops that we see in so much fantasy art are from the 1600s. About the only truly medieval look we see in fantasy is the long tunic with a sword belt.

Neuschwanstein Castle, like something out of a fairytale, on a snowy day
Neuschwanstein Castle looks like something from a fairytale, but was built in the 1800s. (I took this photo from a rickety suspended bridge, and it was utterly terrifying.)
Warwick Castle, with thick walls and towers
This is a medieval castle. Warwick Castle in England.

The Gothic style of architecture, with its spires and graceful pointed arches, was only used for churches during the medieval period. Castles built then were fortresses. They needed to be something that could keep the enemy out. The imagery of Gothic-style castles, so common in fantasy art, comes from the Victorian Gothic Revival. Neuschwanstein, the castle that inspired the Disneyland castle (and so many fantasy castles), was built in the late 1800s.

It didn’t come up in the video, but I’ll add that the roaring fire in the massive fireplace is also post-medieval. In the medieval era, they were more likely to have an open hearth in the middle of the floor. Existing medieval buildings have often been retrofitted to add fireplaces and chimneys. It’s like the way my current home has central air conditioning and fiber Internet, but that doesn’t mean it had those things when it was built in 1924.

In general, the “medieval” fantasy aesthetic is based on the 1600s, but without gunpowder. It is possible that some authors really did mean for things to be properly medieval, but the cover artists went with more common fantasy imagery and the authors were tearing their hair out over the inaccuracy. For instance, I know that Katherine Kurtz was very particular about being as close as possible to historical accuracy for her Deryni series, with one part of the timeline set in the 10th century and another part in the 12th century, and she describes the clothing based on that, but on the book covers, the men are wearing those tall cuffed boots.

I found all this interesting because I’d decided to mentally set a world I’ve been building in the 1640s for the aesthetic and technology (minus gunpowder), mostly because the clothes are closest to fitting that fairytale look I had in mind. I guess even without consciously being aware of it, my “medieval” fantasy was being more Stuart.

My Rydding Village world is a mix of things. I think we’re at close to a 1600s level of technology, though in rural areas things don’t change all that much from the 1500s through the 1700s. We’re late enough to have fireplaces, but not quite to the point of having iron stoves. The 1600s and early 1700s buildings at the Museum of Frontier Culture are close to what I imagine. I keep picturing Elwyn in medieval style dresses, the kind that are close-fitting through the body and with full skirts, but Mair is usually wearing more the Renaissance festival type outfit in my head. But there’s also a lot of Regency-style culture going on in the upper classes. I think it’s just a general pre-industrial world with bits and pieces from a lot of eras rather than being based on any one particular time period.