A Fan's Playground

So, more Hugo reading! So I just finished The Everlasting and I have Feelings and I have to talk about it. In fact, I unexpectedly had so many feelings that I then made the mistake of telling D about it. And you will all just have to suffer with me --

D: Is it about gobstoppers?
Me: No! It is not about gobstoppers!

-- the thing is, I had not been expecting all that much from it, having had previous experience not-intensely-negative-but-not-particularly-positive with Harrow Hugo reading, but I was pleasantly surprised to find the first quarter of the book more compelling than I'd thought it would be. Though I did have this sort of constant low-level irritation during that first quarter because -- well. It takes place as a secondary-world fantasy, taking place in a kingdom called Dominion, that's concerned with two time periods: what I have been calling the "modern era," which is a post-industrial, vaguely early-twentieth-century-feeling sort of place where the best and bravest young men are sent off to fight wars, remembering their semi-mythical founding myth... and the second time period is that distant 1000-year semi-mythical "past era," where there is a semi-mythical queen and her best-beloved knight, Sir Una the Everlasting, whose tragic death is instrumental in constructing the founding myth of the country.

And the thing is, it's probably not 100% obvious from that one-sentence description, but the "modern" era is extremely evocative of WWI-ish Britain what with the young men going off to war and coming back with shell shock and everyone keeping a stiff upper lip about it (except the protesters) and so on, and the "past" era is extremely evocative of Arthurian mythology, what with the once and future queen and the knights she gathers around her and the green hill and the sword in the stone tree that can only be unsheathed by the right person (although it's Una and not the queen who does it), and lots of mentions of a Savior (religion, though, is otherwise completely ignored except when it's useful for resonance), and so on --

D: Are there coconuts?
Me: No! There are no coconuts!

And it just so happens that I have an absolute crapton of feelings about Arthurian mythology (over many decades at this point) and also a whole lot of feelings about WWI Britain (many of which are rather more recent, but even if it weren't for recent media consumption, would have had some feelings about it from general cultural literacy and other media) and it was very clear that Harrow was cheerfully just using all that to make me have feelings about her characters/world, and I was rather annoyed about this because it felt to me like she got to exploit all the resonances without actually having to do any work to, well, actually think hard about the historical/mythical parallels she was exploiting, and also annoyed because, of course, it worked, because I do have quite a few feelings about all these things.

D: Is there a holy grail?
Me: ...yes. Yes, there is a holy grail. There actually is.
D, unfortunately now encouraged: Is there a holy hand grenade?
Me: NO! There is no holy hand grenade!!
D, a little later: Well, is there a Black Knight?
Me: ...kind of.

ANYWAY. The book starts out being narrated by Owen, who is an idealistic, nationalistic, conflicted young man, back from the wars and trying to make his way as a historian. He's also obsessed with Sir Una Everlasting and her story in not all that different a way than the way I was obsessed with all things Arthurian as a kid/adolescent, though rather more shippily. So due to plot reasons, Owen goes back in time to meet Una herself, and is with her on her last quest to find the holy grail (no really) and then goes back with her to what he knows will be her death; his role is to be the one who chronicles her quest and her death.

Me: See, the idea is that he's kind of a Malory figure --
...wait. His last name is literally Mallory. GAH.
D: *laughs at me*

Then I got past the first quarter mark, and it abruptly got both quite a bit more compelling to me -- so I didn't mind the above appropriation nearly as much (plus, by that time it had done its work), and also I started feeling very baffled by exactly how much it was giving off increasing vibes of being a really compelling shipfic. The thing is. I've actually spent quite a bit more time than usual in the last couple of months reading and thinking about fanfic, especially shipfic, for Reasons, and in particular thinking about what I seek out when I seek out fanfic, and what I want to see in a fanfic, and how to create the effects of a shippy fic I would like, and... this book is doing... a LOT of that.

For one thing, it's just piling on tropes on top of tropes (weak geeky man with strong tough woman, mutual pining, competence kink, loyalty kink, fealty kink, road trip, pulling back from betrayal, not pulling back from betrayal, hurt/comfort of course, lack of sleep, protection, nightmare comforting, bathing together, the list goes on, at one point there's even freaking Must Huddle Together For Warmth). And it's deeply satisfying to me because these are all tropes I eat up with a spoon.

And the ship is really very much a fanfic kind of ship, where we sort of assume we're starting out with UST between the two main characters and just building from there. (There are a couple of in-universe reasons for this, starting (but not finishing) with Owen's lifelong obsession with Una, but, like. The vibe!!) And over-the-top UST that goes on for quite a while is something that I am just really really fond of for shippy tropey fics. (Look, my fandom genesis included The X-Files, okay?)

Me: So by the 50 percent mark I was feeling kind of desperate for them to just have sex already.
D: ...uh, okay.

-- and the whole thing was doing this very fic thing of really just being there for the tropes and resonances. Worldbuilding, yeah, fine, great, as long as it reinforces the tropes! And yeah, this was sort of one thing about this book: I was never entirely convinced, I think, that the world existed outside of where the characters happened to be at the time... partially because it had borrowed so much from our world. (There was a bit more unique-worldbuilding near the end, as there sort of had to be.) But it didn't really matter... because you don't really read fic for the worldbuilding, right?

Character development, sure! As long as it reinforces the tropes, which means a lot of dwelling on the three main characters. I do think it's a natural tendency, mind you, especially in a shipfic, to really limit the number of people who have major roles in the fic, because each successive character means more interaction and more inner life that has to be constructed, and anyway you mostly just care about the ship and maybe the antagonist, sure. But I'm kind of amazed that Harrow wrote a whole novel in which there are three actual characters. And there are three more characters who do get screen time and whom I love very very much (Owen's dad -- does he even ever get a name??; Owen's long-suffering thesis advisor; Ancel -- the three of them are probably my favorite characters, in fact) but they do seem to me to have this aura of being taken a little for granted.

It also sort of reminded me of, you know, how you get these >100k fics in a fandom where it's really basically doing the same thing multiple times, or playing with the same fandom dynamic multiple times and stretching it out in ways that it didn't necessarily really have to, and the readers love it, because that's what we're here for. Right up to doing basically the same scene from two different POVs. (Again, there is an in-universe reason, but... very fic vibes, is all I'm saying!)

I believe this explains why I've been seeing such differing opinions of the book on my DW list -- because if you really like the particular tropes Harrow is piling on, you're probably going to be deeply satisfied by it regardless of whether you might have other issues (me, this is me), and if those tropes don't do much for you you're going to be like "what was even the point of that?" and if you like the tropes just fine but aren't particularly into them, the issues might bother you more.

( spoilers! )

Anyway. In conclusion, if you like a particular kind of tropey fic, then I think you will really love this book! (And if you don't, you will probably find it way too long and over-the-top.) Also it has more things to say about nationalism and national myths and fate and heroism and so on than I have really talked about here! I am just here for talking about shipfic, I guess.

D: I still think it should have been about gobstoppers.
Me: NO it should not have been about gobstoppers!!