(no subject)

A business language "what not to do":

Strategic, I understand, is a happy business buzzword, so I can understand (Big Company X, a vendor for the company I work for most these days) wanting to use it for a customer service e-mail address, even if I think it's silly. And "Customer Associate", their chosen term for customer service rep, does naturally shrink to C.A.

However, the net result is an e-mail address starting with:

Castrategic

Which just makes me wince. And I'm not even male.

____________________

This last week, I ended up at two reception jobs with a lot of time on my hands. The result was a LOT of writing time (The first place was set up ideally for hiding the Dana from visitors/casual viewers, and the staff I worked with didn't mind. Especially as I got the odd jobs they found for me done in very short order first, as well as picking up the phone in a timely, friendly fashion.)

It went... oddly, though, as writing can. It's all officially on the same project, which is called the Ginevre books in my brain, but which I usually called "my only heteronormative traditional mediaevalesque fantasy trilogy (with dragons)". Except it's not a trilogy anymore, it's a four book series; The Serpent Prince, Soldier of the Road, the Poisoned Word – which title is based on the name of a dragon, and is thus an epithet as well, to match the other three – and the last book, which is either called the Dragon Queens, or Dragonchild.) And I'd like to think I do enough things to subvert all of the above or at least have thought through what they mean. (To my chagrin, the story has no overt lesbians. Ketan spends too much time in virtually male-only company. To *his* chagrin, as he's about as straight as you get.)

Except that, I started out picking away at Soldier of the Road, which I've been worrying at for a good couple months now when writing at all -- then, the next day, out of some whim, opened the file on the Dana for the Serpent Prince, which I'd almost removed as not needed.

Since then, the two have been running neck and neck – which one I pick up in a given writing session, or whether I trade off halfway through, changes each time. Admittedly, some of the new stuff in Serpent did inform how the very next scene in Soldier goes – as a book should do to its sequel – but it makes a strange synergy to cope with the same people at different moments..

I've been thinking a lot, though, over the age of the main characters. Ketan is 16 for the majority of the Serpent Prince, and Theo's 19. Pomal is probably within a year of Ketan, though she never specifies. Rosor is 18 (actually, her being two years Ketan's elder also goes virtually unmentioned, come to think of it). Vess is 15 for most of the book, and barely 16 when she marries Theo.

Yet by the end of the Serpent Prince, Ketan has already been faced with marriage, wars external and civil, political dissent, blasphemy (in a world where the gods have a lot to say directly about same), betrayal, and judging in trials for murder and high treason. (Also nepotism, stupid behaviour about girls, arguments with dad, doing the right thing for the wrong reason and the wrong thing for lack of experience, but those go with being a teenager. Although, granted, arguments with dad are a lot different when you have to be extremely careful not to accidentally cross the line into treason just for saying you don't like his rules.)

I keep wanting to flinch on this. I keep thinking, nobody would bat an eye if I quietly added two years to everyone. The thing is, I want to face the fact that they're a bunch of younglings. I want there to be a subtext about how fast you grow up when the consequences for failure aren't social embarrassment but murder, or a curse from a god. About how to act when age isn't considered an excuse for not knowing, when you can't say "But I'm just 16!" and expect anyone at all to pause for anything, be it asking you to act as judge or slaughtering you in battle.

About irrevocable life-altering mistakes you make when you're nine, or 15, or 20. Because while these are not impossible to do in our world -- where you could end up in an unskilled labour job because at 16 you weren't thinking seriously about the fact that you want to be a doctor but can't afford University without a scholarship, or a dislike of condoms or a missed pill could make one's future VERY different indeed -- we now consider these bad things, and have a number of steps and means that such a person can get support so they can try again. A change I DO approve, compared to the world I write in. ***

The thing is, I'm not trying to MAKE that point. I'm not trying to have that debate about better or worse. Indeed, I suspect that that aspect of the books will go under a lot of radars, and hope it will; it's not even a theme, just a thing.

The entire point, indeed, boils down to, "This isn't our world. They don't make our choices or have our assumptions." A point which is lost if I do add even two years. Because while that still feels uncomfortable, it downplays it. It asks that it sneak under the radar for fear of troubling sensibilities. To not be different enough from 21st century first world ideas, gods and unquestioned monarchy**** notwithstanding, to bother those who like it here.

I think I fail too much as it is; I'm sure the boys have attitudes that give away the writer's 21st century assumptions. And I don't want that. But it keeps whispering.

I can't quite tune it out entire. There are times it's legitimate to ease the way of readers, and isn't a case of abandoning a vision; Bear chose to write the Stratford Man not with complete Elizabethan dialogue, but with something between that and modern idiom, that people might actually make it through the splendid book.

I don't think *this* is the time to listen to that voice. But to silence it whole it is to lose a possibly useful editorial tool in the future. Which means it gets to annoy me now, whent he decision is made.

_______________

** Not sure why I did the last two: Soldier should be a viable entry point for the series if I had to sell it separately, but I'm dubious that the other two could stand or sell alone.

*** Conversely, there is something to be said for the arguments against overprotection, or for how little we allow our teenagers to accomplish or experience. Everything is, after all, a matter of balance, and as often as not, more information and less protection might have *prevented* some such bad choices being made. But I will never say it's wrong to try and mitigate the effects of a bad choice made young.

**** Ketan actually does fail to consider the idea that a patrilineal monarchy is bad. That surprised me; he really does end up questioning so much else, right up to the decrees of Gods - though he *also* never considers the idea of not worshipping something, even in the face of the fallibility of deity.

* there is no single star footnote because, feeling too lazy for html, I used single stars framing a word for emphasis.

(no subject)

A business language "what not to do":

Strategic, I understand, is a happy business buzzword, so I can understand (Big Company X, a vendor for the company I work for most these days) wanting to use it for a customer service e-mail address, even if I think it's silly. And "Customer Associate", their chosen term for customer service rep, does naturally shrink to C.A.

However, the net result is an e-mail address starting with:

Castrategic

Which just makes me wince. And I'm not even male.

____________________

This last week, I ended up at two reception jobs with a lot of time on my hands. The result was a LOT of writing time (The first place was set up ideally for hiding the Dana from visitors/casual viewers, and the staff I worked with didn't mind. Especially as I got the odd jobs they found for me done in very short order first, as well as picking up the phone in a timely, friendly fashion.)

It went... oddly, though, as writing can. It's all officially on the same project, which is called the Ginevre books in my brain, but which I usually called "my only heteronormative traditional mediaevalesque fantasy trilogy (with dragons)". Except it's not a trilogy anymore, it's a four book series; The Serpent Prince, Soldier of the Road, the Poisoned Word – which title is based on the name of a dragon, and is thus an epithet as well, to match the other three – and the last book, which is either called the Dragon Queens, or Dragonchild.) And I'd like to think I do enough things to subvert all of the above or at least have thought through what they mean. (To my chagrin, the story has no overt lesbians. Ketan spends too much time in virtually male-only company. To *his* chagrin, as he's about as straight as you get.)

Except that, I started out picking away at Soldier of the Road, which I've been worrying at for a good couple months now when writing at all -- then, the next day, out of some whim, opened the file on the Dana for the Serpent Prince, which I'd almost removed as not needed.

Since then, the two have been running neck and neck – which one I pick up in a given writing session, or whether I trade off halfway through, changes each time. Admittedly, some of the new stuff in Serpent did inform how the very next scene in Soldier goes – as a book should do to its sequel – but it makes a strange synergy to cope with the same people at different moments..

I've been thinking a lot, though, over the age of the main characters. Ketan is 16 for the majority of the Serpent Prince, and Theo's 19. Pomal is probably within a year of Ketan, though she never specifies. Rosor is 18 (actually, her being two years Ketan's elder also goes virtually unmentioned, come to think of it). Vess is 15 for most of the book, and barely 16 when she marries Theo.

Yet by the end of the Serpent Prince, Ketan has already been faced with marriage, wars external and civil, political dissent, blasphemy (in a world where the gods have a lot to say directly about same), betrayal, and judging in trials for murder and high treason. (Also nepotism, stupid behaviour about girls, arguments with dad, doing the right thing for the wrong reason and the wrong thing for lack of experience, but those go with being a teenager. Although, granted, arguments with dad are a lot different when you have to be extremely careful not to accidentally cross the line into treason just for saying you don't like his rules.)

I keep wanting to flinch on this. I keep thinking, nobody would bat an eye if I quietly added two years to everyone. The thing is, I want to face the fact that they're a bunch of younglings. I want there to be a subtext about how fast you grow up when the consequences for failure aren't social embarrassment but murder, or a curse from a god. About how to act when age isn't considered an excuse for not knowing, when you can't say "But I'm just 16!" and expect anyone at all to pause for anything, be it asking you to act as judge or slaughtering you in battle.

About irrevocable life-altering mistakes you make when you're nine, or 15, or 20. Because while these are not impossible to do in our world -- where you could end up in an unskilled labour job because at 16 you weren't thinking seriously about the fact that you want to be a doctor but can't afford University without a scholarship, or a dislike of condoms or a missed pill could make one's future VERY different indeed -- we now consider these bad things, and have a number of steps and means that such a person can get support so they can try again. A change I DO approve, compared to the world I write in. ***

The thing is, I'm not trying to MAKE that point. I'm not trying to have that debate about better or worse. Indeed, I suspect that that aspect of the books will go under a lot of radars, and hope it will; it's not even a theme, just a thing.

The entire point, indeed, boils down to, "This isn't our world. They don't make our choices or have our assumptions." A point which is lost if I do add even two years. Because while that still feels uncomfortable, it downplays it. It asks that it sneak under the radar for fear of troubling sensibilities. To not be different enough from 21st century first world ideas, gods and unquestioned monarchy**** notwithstanding, to bother those who like it here.

I think I fail too much as it is; I'm sure the boys have attitudes that give away the writer's 21st century assumptions. And I don't want that. But it keeps whispering.

I can't quite tune it out entire. There are times it's legitimate to ease the way of readers, and isn't a case of abandoning a vision; Bear chose to write the Stratford Man not with complete Elizabethan dialogue, but with something between that and modern idiom, that people might actually make it through the splendid book.

I don't think *this* is the time to listen to that voice. But to silence it whole it is to lose a possibly useful editorial tool in the future. Which means it gets to annoy me now, whent he decision is made.

_______________

** Not sure why I did the last two: Soldier should be a viable entry point for the series if I had to sell it separately, but I'm dubious that the other two could stand or sell alone.

*** Conversely, there is something to be said for the arguments against overprotection, or for how little we allow our teenagers to accomplish or experience. Everything is, after all, a matter of balance, and as often as not, more information and less protection might have *prevented* some such bad choices being made. But I will never say it's wrong to try and mitigate the effects of a bad choice made young.

**** Ketan actually does fail to consider the idea that a patrilineal monarchy is bad. That surprised me; he really does end up questioning so much else, right up to the decrees of Gods - though he *also* never considers the idea of not worshipping something, even in the face of the fallibility of deity.

* there is no single star footnote because, feeling too lazy for html, I used single stars framing a word for emphasis.