Subject: My thoughts
Author:
Posted on: 2018-10-14 21:10:00 UTC
First, on introductions to 40k:
The Gaunt's Ghosts First and Only the first (but not only) 40k novel I read, though I was introduced to the wargame first, and I would recommend it (the novel) highly.
Second, on Gilgamesh:
I just want to say that I really enjoy a lot of ancient mythology, especially when its strange, and the heroes die.
Jump to Ahriman
Jump to Gilgamesh
No central theme this week, it's just that those are the two things I read.
When I say "Ahriman," I refer to John French's Ahriman Trilogy, specifically the version contained within the Ahriman: The Omnibus volume, complete with sidestories, which follows the character in Warhammer 40,000 that goes by the same name. It's not to be confused with any other Ahriman Trilogy (yes, as it turns out there is another one), or any other Ahriman, although that Ahriman is the way the guy gets his name, because GW loves their historical references.
Anyways, this is a 40k tie-in series. And... not really one I'd suggest to newcomers to either 40k or to the Thousand Sons, at least not off the bat. Go read some Horus Heresy (specifically, A Thousand Sons, one of the better books in the series and the canonical introduction to the titular legion), or maybe Ciaphas Cain for a better introduction to the setting. Oh, and definitely go watch If The Emperor Had a Text To Speech Device, a hilarious fan-based parody that's become an ingrained part of the fandom at this point (sidenote: that playlist opens with the video "An Intro to the Dark Millenium", which is unfortunate because the TTSVerse actually hasn't reached the Dark Millenium yet, so it just confuses things. Skip it!)
For those of you who are at least aware of 40k, but maybe not aware of the Thousand Sons, still probably go read A Thousand Sons if you intend to read this thing. Yeah, I know you could probably puzzle it out with the Wiki's help, but it really use useful to just read in that order.
Onwards from my suggestions on how to actually get into 40k and read this thing to my thoughts on it. Which are that I really really really really really like this series. This shouldn't really be a surprise to most people who have heard me talk 40k before: I've raised these books more than a few times, and I've gone on record saying that Ahriman is my favorite character in 40k. Were it up to me, these books would probably be some sort of required reading, at least for 40k fans.
Now, some of you may be aware that 40k has a bit of a split personality. On the one hand, "grim dark future", on the other hand, one faction is literally a bunch of green football hooligan mushrooms who run on the power of being too stupid to realize that they're wrong (that's not an exaggeration). So depending on the writer, the 40k setting and cast can be the subject or horror, hot-blooded action, or dark comedy. Other genres, too, but it's usually one of those three. Ahriman definitely comes in on the darker side of the spectrum. This vision of 40k is vast, bleak, and oppressive. Which is... really appropriate, given the context and themes. Ahriman the character has always walked the line between anti-hero and outright villain, driven on an eternal quest that may not even be achievable by hope, dreams, and a gnawing guilt that may yet drive him mad. And sure, his goals are noble, but... do the ends really justify it?
And the smart thing about the series is that it leaves it up to you. In the very introduction, French say that's his intent, and I think it pulls it off well. If you want to believe that Ahriman is mad and delusional and arrogant and utterly beyond ever achieving anything, you can. If you want to see him as a genius, an anti-hero, a straight up villain corrupted by power... those are all valid interpretations of what's happening in the story. There are an awful lot of characters who believe any number of those things.
But yeah, this series is dark. Even in the first book, and it keeps going down. The quote in there that I still think sums it up the best is this: "We are falling, and light is but a memory."
Man, this is getting kinda depressing. Let's lighten the mood by talking about an epic poem about the elevation of a hero though an endless parade of misery and despair... said no-one ever until now.
Yes, the other thing I read this week was Gilgamesh. Specifically, Gilgamesh: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell, a version of the poem that I really can't recommend highly enough. It makes the poem accessible to the English reader without sacrificing the heart of the thing, and it's a heck of a lot easier on the eyes and brain than most other translations I've looked up since. It does not, however, include the independent poem (that serves as... a sort of noncanon epilogue, I guess? It's a little weird...) on the 12th tablet, so you'll need to find another version for that if you really want to go read it (although I honestly don't think you're missing much).
This is also helped by the fact that, even unaided by a translation this strong, Gilgamesh is... really, really compelling. It opens with an introduction that just makes you want to keep reading, and that keeps going throughout. Part of that is the translation, Mitchell having done for Gilgamesh what Heaney did for Beowulf, but when I looked up more literal translations, I was surprised to what degree those same hooks were present. It's a good piece of literature.
Also, if you're used to hero mythology, Gilgamesh might not be what you expect. In some ways, it's Campbell to the absolute, with many steps in the journey of a hero present. But that view starts to break down in some ways, because, at least by my reading, Gilgamesh is not about a mighty hero going out and achieving something for their civilization. It's about a man who, while powerful, is ultimately deeply unheroic becoming the sort of hero who can ultimately go on to do those things. For you Fate fans out in the audience, it's the story of how Archer!Gilgamesh became Caster!Gilgamesh (some would argue otherwise regarding Archer's Origins. I say they're wrong. Fight me). It is about loss, and the fear of death, and coming to terms with the consequence of your actions. In that sense, it perhaps has more in common with a coming of age story than a traditional Hero's Journey.
Given, this is all my perspective, and I'm not exactly well known for being right.
If you all have thoughts about any of these things, or questions about the disorganized mess of my ideas that I've presented before you, please share them below. I really want there to be some actual discussion, and I know that there are other people on the board who've read both these works and I'm totally missing stuff.
-Thoth, signing off.
I wasn't really interested in seeing this movie, since it isn't official MCU. But my brother wanted to see it, and the Eminem song is pretty cool, so we went yesterday. And hey, it was better than I expected.
Spoilers follow for the Venom film.
The impression I got from Venom's trailers was that it was going to be some nineties grim-dark preteen boy-aimed violence-fest, so I was pleased to discover it . . . wasn't. There was humor in it, and while there was unavoidably violence, it wasn't as gory as I was expecting. I enjoyed it for what it was; the creators were faced with writing a story with a character who's normally a villain in the role of protagonist, and they did a good job with that restriction. (Interestingly, my brother had gotten the impression that it was a much better movie due to all the hype around it on the internet, and was actually disappointed by the final product. Low expectations, heck yeah!)
I was amused by the fact there was a solid premise for a non-sci fi, non-comic book story right in the opening moments of the movie. Looking past the shuttle crash and the alien organisms, I legitimately would have enjoyed a movie about Eddie Brock investigatively journalisming at Transhumanist!Elon Musk to uncover all the shady human testing elements of his business. But then, I guess it wouldn't have been a comic book movie . . .
I was skeptical of how well it would work to cast Venom as a protagonist, but the writers managed it pretty well. In the absence of a traditional hero like Spider-man, and using an equally alien but much more single-minded creature of Venom's own species as the villain, Venom does indeed feel like a character I can root for in this situation, despite its monstrous qualities being dangerous in other situations. They played up its lack of human thought and emotion in a comedic way to make it feel more ignorant of social norms, rather than outright malevolent.
I really liked the Scientist Lady with Glasses and Morals. The fact that Venom even found the right host to be able to battle Riot later on is entirely thanks to her, so I'm very disappointed that she was killed. Even that has a silver lining, though, since her death wound up inadvertently taking out the blue symbiote, which probably would have allied itself with Riot and made it harder for Venom to stop the rocket.
Minor things I liked:
*Venom basically doing a "web-shoot" while escaping Elon Musk's private military. Even though Spider-Man's not around, they had to homage Venom's origins!
*The moment during the final fight when Venom and Riot are fighting and draw away from Eddie and Elon, and the two humans have a fistfight in the middle of the roiling protoplasm. It's silly as heck, don't get me wrong, but the fact the situation is pretty much unique to this plot lets me give that a pass, because we may never get a scene like that in any other movie, ever.
*For being nothing more than a teaser for a potential sequel, there was excellent casting and acting for Guy Who Becomes Carnage Eventually. He was very eerie, even after saying he wanted to skip the serial killer stereotypes. I also loved that he was writing in his own blood, to foreshadow the role it plays in his future as a supervillain.
*Probably the most fourth wall-breaking Stan Lee cameo of all!
Minor things I disliked:
*Both Venom and Riot see a lot of convenience in hopping from host to host, but of course, this is easily overlookable for the sake of letting the plot move forward.
Uh, bonus?
doctorlit reviews "Venom" by Eminem (warning for NSFW words and the r-word learning-disabled slur in lyrics)
I don't know exactly how much creative control was wielded by Eminem himself vs. the movie creators. The lyrics are a mix of Eminem autobiography and references to Eddie and the Venom symbiote. At least the Venom properties are fairly established characters in pop culture, so the song's references to them won't feel aged once the movie fades into obscurity.
I found the music video quite amusing, with all the different people lip-syncing to Eminem lyrics—especially the little kid and the old man. It's such a reversal of the sort of face that I usually see rapping, that it's quite trip to watch.
—doctorlit, a conflicted Eminem fan
♪I'm the super spoiler Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to♪ ♪I'm the super spoiler Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to♪ ♪I'm the super spoiler Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to♪ ♪I'm the super spoiler Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to♪
Just tacking this onto another review post for efficiency’s sake. Hope you don’t mind, Thoth!
(I read The Epic of Gilgamesh way back in high school, and I’m afraid I don’t remember enough of it to have any real opinions about it, other than, “it’s an amazing and lucky miracle that it survived long enough to be recorded in modern languages.”)
The Prodigal Sorcerer is one of the Magic: the Gathering novels that were published by HarperPrism back in the mid-nineties, and generally aren’t acknowledged as canon any more, although technically anything that doesn’t contradict more modern setting details is still canon. They’re out of print, so I’ve had to buy them off of Amazon, though I did get lucky back in college and find a copy of The Cursed Land at a traveling used book sale that came to Arizona State University’s campus. That’s the only one I’ve read prior to this, and happily I found that not only was it a good story, but nothing in it contradicted modern Magic, allowing me to safely accept it into my headcanon as “definitely really happened.”
TPS was also a very enjoyable story. Going into nineties fantasy, it was easy for me to expect both of them to be dated, with a focus on male protagonists, solving problems through violence, and other stereotypes characteristic of early nerd culture. And both novels proved me wrong in excellent ways. Both had a woman as the primary protagonist, and while war is present in both, and especially in TPS, it’s portrayed as the weakest option for fixing problems in both, and both have some degree of getting to know opponents, and working together with them to solve problems. TPS doesn’t quite jive with modern canon as well, but it was mostly things that aren’t really the author’s fault, as the color pie wasn’t as defined back in those early days.
Spoilers follow from this point for The Prodigal Sorcerer. There’s going to be one paragraph with some potentially uncomfortable subject matter, which I’ll warn for just before it arrives, in case the content isn’t your thing. [I’ve actually wound up moving that to the very bottom below my signature, so it’s safe to read up to that point.] The rest of this review should be G rated.
The most basic theme in TPS is of how racial prejudice can blind people to overlook actual dangers. We don’t really know much of the overall world where TPS takes place, thanks to a magic Magewall that keeps the valley of narrative focus largely cut off from the rest of the plane. Within the valley, barring a few members of races that aren’t focused on, are humans, elves (called Garans), and Viashino (Magic’s race of lizard-men). The human leader Tagard wants to unite everyone in the valley, but the problem is that the Viashino have what seems to be the only fortified city within the magewall. He unites the humans and Garan to attack it and take it over, and then creates a united council of human, Garan and Viashino to make democratic decisions —woops, he got assassinated. And then his daughter Talli has to get over her prejudice towards the Viashino (Viashino had killed her mother years ago) to keep the uneasy three-way alliance together. Naturally, not a single one of the characters ultimately revealed to be villainous in the end is Viashino, and most of the conflict is caused by other humans. I liked that—that the protagonist was so focused on hating the lizard-folk who were so unlike her, that she overlooked the threat coming from the more similar species, and lost her father for it. (I mean, I like the message behind it, not that bad things happened to her.) Another more minor detail that I liked: a lot of fantasy fiction is written from a human perspective, so any character whose species isn’t described “defaults” to human. But the narration in TPS is always aware that humans are by no means dominant. It always explicitly names a human a human, and even human characters will refer to others as humans, rather than people. Because they live in a world where not all the people are humans!
The viashino are a bit off-brand for the color pie. They were mostly Red-mana creatures back in the early days, but with their fortified city of Berimish, their preserved cultural heritage, and their thriving, orderly markets, the viashino of this plane are pretty solidly White. I do still like them; the details that they prefer climbing straight up walls rather than using stairs, and don’t know their own biological sexes until they mature to a certain point, make them feel more like a race of actual lizards that evolved sentience, rather than humans who got a scaly visual overlay. They just . . . don’t quite match modern viashino in Magic. Although within the context of the novel, it does at least keep consistency with respect to enemy color pairs, as the human culture is pretty clearly red here. They live in caves, are easily driven to anger, and have close bonds to their immediate communities. So at least the Red vs. White conflict is properly present.
The Garan elves are also a little iffy to me. Abhorring constructed weaponry is certainly Green, but the reason the Garans forbid weapons feels more Red. Basically, they had such violent wars against each other in the past that they nearly wiped themselves out, and learned carefully controlled hand-to-hand combat in order to force some control and caution over combat. First of all, I recognize this as being ripped off of Vulcans, even as a non-Trekker. But secondly, yeah. Having such uncontrolled emotions is blatantly red in M;tG, even at the start, so it feels weird. Still, it is a creative new take on why a given culture of elves forgoes metal weaponry.
But for an absolute home run with the color pie, we have the humans of Suderbod, in their swamp-based kingdom just outside the Magewall. I love that Sumner actually worked the geography of swamps as M:tG’s source of Black mana into the culture of the humans who live there. Living in a low, dirty land means there’s a heavy cultural focus of cleanliness, with the need for public communal baths beating out public propriety against nudity as a cultural norm, and the fact that those with higher social status are more able/compelled to wash frequently. The clothes and even armor of the Suder sport garish bright colors in contrasting geometric patterns, which would show off any physical muck more clearly, giving the wearers an even greater incentive to keep clean. The best part is (and I didn’t even realize until I happened to notice a copy of the Prodigal Sorcerer card on the back of the novel) that those color schemes were inspired directly by the older art on that card; even the floppy hat and forked beard were incorporated into the fashions of the Suder. It’s ultimately a minor detail, but it’s still rather cool that Sumner took every detail he could from the one card (I know of) that inspired the novel.
So ultimately, considering this novel’s age, it’s still decently in-line with modern M:tG, and isn’t much a blend of stereotypes from outdated nerd culture. Pretty nice! I’m looking forward to reading more of these out-of-print M:tG novels, and making posts about them, even though I’m almost certainly the only one here who’s bothered to track them down and no one will have anything to add.
Hm. I think I’ll just push that one unpleasant paragraph off to after my usual outro stuff, so folks can skip it if they don’t want to read it. It’s going to be discussing non-graphically the leader of Suderbod intending to molest a teenage elf male and a teenage human female. There’s nothing else of real value from this point, so stop reading and don’t scroll further if that’s not for you.
—doctorlit, about to go on an epic wiki walk about M:tG after not really paying much attention to it for years
“Some Viashino think spoilers are nice to look at, that’s all.” “Some Viashino think spoilers are nice to look at, that’s all.” “Some Viashino think spoilers are nice to look at, that’s all.” “Some Viashino think spoilers are nice to look at, that’s all.”
Okay, the unpleasantness begins here: yeah, the leader of Suderbod, I forget . . . Solin, that’s the name. Apparently he’s way into bedroom stuff, and went after two of the main characters, mainly because of the boy—he had never been with a Garan before. I don’t feel it really added anything to the narrative. It’s mostly there so Solin’s one underling can leave him alone with the wizard girl so she could kill Solin and let the underling take the throne. But it could have been, you know, a dinner party to hear Garan fairy tales, or whatever. The only reason I even bring the scene up, and the only detail that somewhat vindicates its presence, is that it kind of reverses the gender expectations of the setup: Solin goes after the boy first, and the girl is the one who saves him by saying “take me instead” and then magicking Solin to death. That at least makes for a nice finale to the scene, but again, it would have been nicer for the novel not to contain that scene to begin with.
I haven't read the particular translation you mention, but I own a different version, so here: talking!
The Epic of Gilgamesh is, to a modern reader, a deeply weird story, but it has resonances. If you're Judeo-Christian: remember how Genesis randomly includes stories like that of Onan (who was killed by God for doing sex wrong), or how Lamech just wanders up to his family and says, "You know how Cain was a murderer and God hated him? Yeah, I'm like that, only much worse", or how there are multiple scenes where some ostensibly sympathetic character gets blind drunk and people do stuff to them while they sleep (Noah and Lot spring to mind)? Or if you're not Christian: you know how Greek mythology has this endless litany of 'and then Zeus turned into a different animal which some girl happened to be really into and/or maybe it was rape, who knows'?
Yeah, Gilgamesh is like that. One of the opening scenes has the gods deciding that Gilgamesh needs a best bud to fight (so he'll stop ignoring his job), so they create a super hairy man named Enkidu. But, problem! Enkidu is quite happy to just chill out in the countryside, hanging with his wild animal besties.
Solution: a hunter who ran into Enkidu asks Gilgamesh if he can borrow a prostitute, then takes her and has her get naked to lure Enkidu away from the animals. After a literal week of constant boinking, Enkidu agrees to go over to Uruk and meet this Gilgamesh bloke. And Gilly and Enki fight, and then they kiss and make up, and then they go off to fight some monsters for kicks.
None of this is hyperbole or subtext; it's all right there on the tablets. It's all like that. Seriously. (Oh, and the prostitute is named 'Sham-hat', because history is awesome.)
The thing about Gilgamesh it's that it's a lot less refined than the Greek myths (or the Biblical ones). Homer, Hesiod, or Moses have a textual tradition behind them: they've been continually recorded, translated, and altered for thousands of years. Gilgamesh, in contrast, is known from original, 4000-year-old clay tablets. It's a record of a sprawling oral tradition at the time it was current. It's fireside stories told by a bunch of different people, all crammed together into an only crudely-joined narrative.
hS
It is all of those things. As Mitchell notes (and this is fascinating, which is why I'm borrowing it), sex in this mythology isn't an act of savagery, or something sinister. Sex is noble, and a civilizing act.
It's also notable that that prostitute isn't really a prostitute: she's a priestess. Sexuality isn't just civilizing, it's actually holy.
And yeah, Gilgamesh is definitely less refined. The version I read was primarily based on the "standard version" which was a later Akkadian version. The earlier Babylonian versions are actually separate stories, and have their own mix of information that's a little different: namely, they're a lot more independent, being a chronicle of several stories rather than a single epic.
In that respect, they're comparable to the XIIth tablet of the standard version, which tells an entirely different story and actively contradicts the rest of the epic (Enkidu dies in a totally different way), and is primarily used as a device to explain the grim details of the underworld to the reader or listener.
In the version I remember, after Enkidu had sex non-stop for a week, he left the forest because none of the animals wanted anything to do with him anymore.
His sexual awakening removed him from nature, and made him a man—not in that sense, as in he's human.
So, a hairy ape-man learns to *ahem* cooperate socially with other people, leaves the forest, and thereby becomes human? Did the Akkadians mythologize evolution before England was even a nation where some guy called Darwin could be born?
~Neshomeh really needs to read this.
Yeah, that's not an inaccurate summary.
Also, it's interesting to note the differences between Enkidu and Gilgamesh. Enkidu, the recently civilized wild man, is the gentler of the two (for the most part). Heck, he keeps freeing animals from traps, which is why he needs to be dealt with to begin with.
By contrast, Gilgamesh, two-thirds divine, is described at the start as "a raging bull," and is shown to be arrogant, reckless, and initially tyrannical.
I get the feeling the gods here might well be more feared than loved...
... animals don't... have... sex?
hS
It's just humans (and maybe a few other outliers like bonobos and dolphins) who get all emotional over it and make it weird.
"Enkidu," said a ground squirrel, while avoiding looking into the human's eyes, "that was weird. You made it weird. Why did you make it so weird? Look, I don't really want to be seen around you any more. Weirdo."
—doctorlit put a lot of effort into making that passage match the feel of the original tablets
"What the hell was that? You just... KEPT DOING IT. For a WEEK! Why?"
I would LOVE to see an explanation for what the logic is there.
I mean, I just kinda accepted it, because I'm used to doing that with myths, but it os weird.
First, on introductions to 40k:
The Gaunt's Ghosts First and Only the first (but not only) 40k novel I read, though I was introduced to the wargame first, and I would recommend it (the novel) highly.
Second, on Gilgamesh:
I just want to say that I really enjoy a lot of ancient mythology, especially when its strange, and the heroes die.