sarahreesbrennan

[sarahreesbrennan]

the villain song always a banger

saw a tiktok analysis today about how huntr/x's songs are about the artists and tHEIR feelings and they're sharing them with their fans like a conversation, but the saja boys have songs ABOUT "you" as an audience member. i want to take this a step further... the saja boys have songs that are explicitly about consuming the audience

in soda pop, it's very much presented at the cutesy Want You Need You boy bad stuff, but it's still about consumption. the audience are being compared to a fleeting, bubbly drink. a sweet treat. you are something to be used very briefly and then thrown away. "won't stop til my soda pop fizzles out". "gotta drink every drop". like, yeah there's the sexual undertones, but we as the audience know that it's not cutesy boy band stuff with a bit of a sexy undertone. this is about consuming people's souls. the band IS singing about it! their evil plan is right there in the tooth rotting bubble gum pop opener!

i didn't quite realize how ominous soda pop was until i listened to it in hindsight, but with the added context of your idol and all of ITS imagery... it's unsettling.

your idol of course starts with dies irae- the most famous part of a catholic REQUIEM MASS sung in a mainly traditional chant style. the isolating, possessive lyrics tinted with the heavy handed additions to the catholic imagery? placing them as the object of worship? like. it is just SO good. now these are VILLAINS!

[sarahreesbrennan]

Sometimes you get a fictional character that stays with you for long enough that they become Nursery Real. This is not a new phenomenon; I have no way of proving this, but I imagine this has been happening for as long as people have been telling stories. This relationship is far and away beyond any responsibility of their creator/s (assuming the creator is not yourself), totally independent of their intentions, the same way the person sewing together a toy rabbit for sale, one of a hundred such, isn't necessarily predicting that this one in particular will become someone's most important companion, in joy and in despair. This creation may not even resemble who or what they were when they were a toy-- worn into a new shape from being much beloved-- and as a consequence it becomes much more difficult to share them, because they have become a piece of your heart. (That's alright. Some things can just be for you. Not everything meaningful can be shared.) They have grown up with you as your understanding of what it means to be a person has grown. You can no longer look at them and think: "this character is my favorite part of this story" but "ah, it's you". "To me, you are a person, and I have loved you in every way that one can love." And you know, as you must know, that they exist as an idea-- certainly they cannot take you to the hospital if you fall ill, or do your shopping, or intervene on your behalf during a quarrel you are not present for. But you can nurture each other in a real way, and they can give you strength in a real way; having a relationship with someone who is made of thought is an exploration of vectors of the soul and selfhood and love that I have not yet found to exist anywhere else. Yes, they are an idea, and perhaps when we die and become an idea ourselves, we will meet again in recognition. This isn't your favorite fiction, this is your velveteen rabbit.

[sarahreesbrennan]

This is a joy to read, and boy does @fahye know romance in a way I don’t! Excited for Freya’s house book.

However I am so, so terribly embarrassed to realise I’ve thought of Howl (devastated though I am to disagree with Emily Tesh, Howl is my book over Fire and Hemlock every time, I am basic, though perhaps part of that is Howl IS a funny book - and it’s a skill to be both funny and smart, and to have readers generally recognise you’re being both) as a fairytale and a portal fantasy so much…

I never thought of it as being a gothic. When I LOVE a gothic! The book’s title is literally MY MAN’S EXTREMELY COOL MAGIC AND FANCY HOUSE. How did I not see it before? Gothic is the girl meets house genre. And oh boy, does Sophie (literally!) clean house.

Her mind was such a blank that for a second, it actually seemed to her that Howl had no faults at all. How stupid! 

The fantastic @fahye joins us for a discussion of John Donne, fairy tales, unmusical Welshmen, and Diana Wynne Jones' first truly romantic novel.

Transcript available here, and we'll be back next time to close out our season with A Tale of Time City! (though we also have a few bonus episodes planned for the season break)

Also, if you enjoyed this episode, we could not more highly recommend checking out Freya's upcoming novella, Cinder House, coming October of this year.

[sarahreesbrennan]

Much deserved, @eightdaysofdiana 💕

Happy 91st birthday to the late and greatly missed Diana Wynne Jones! Fingers crossed for @eightdaysofdiana in tonight's Hugo Awards!

[sarahreesbrennan]

« While some people disagree with me, I firmly believe that regret is one of our most powerful emotional reminders that reflection, change, and growth are necessary. In our research, regret emerged as a function of empathy. And, when used constructively, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom.

. . . “No regrets” has become synonymous with daring and adventure, but I disagree. The idea of “no regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe we have nothing to learn. . . Maybe we don’t like the accountability that often comes with regret.

In our work, we find that what we regret most are our failures of courage. . . Regrets about not taking chances have made me braver. »

— Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart

[sarahreesbrennan]

Coming across this in a queer history book published 2011 like. "This tension remains with us today." Yeah. That's still fucking true.

[sarahreesbrennan]

Sarah to herself upon seeing this casting: verify! Because if this marriage of two of your great childhood loves (Interview with the Vampire and Pride and Prejudice) is not real, what will become of you?

Sarah, combing the internet: Real or not real?

Sarah: REAL!!!

Sarah: Star of the one truly great Pride & Prejudice adaptation, reason I always wanted to watch the unaired Game of Thrones pilot, plays wild wanderer who didn’t teach her kid to read but did fund his escape from the castle to Paris Where Everyone Gets Vampired!

Jennifer Ehle has been officialy cast as Gabrielle de Lioncourt in ‘Interview with the Vampire’ S3: The Vampire Lestat

[sarahreesbrennan]

AHHHHHH!

My man!!!!

Scream for me! 🎸 We have your first look at Interview With The Vampire's SDCC poster of Sam Reid as rock star Lestat

via tv insider

[sarahreesbrennan]

Do you know if there will be any special editions of All Hail Chaos?

Annnnd is it definitely a duology?

Time of Iron is a trilogy. :)

[sarahreesbrennan]

Your writing has always meant so much and is such an inspiration to me — I reread In Other Lands annually and I can’t wait for the next Long Live Evil book. I also loved the Unspoken trilogy and I was wondering (if you wouldn’t mind sharing!!) whether you had any tips for writing a trilogy specifically. Did you plan everything out before the first book was finished and what was it like to edit that book before the others in the trilogy were finished?

Thank you so much, and… Yes I do! I have a set of trilogy rules I believe all trilogies follow.

Book 1 - set up

Book 2 - make out

Book 3 - defeat evil

The Lord of the Rings follows this pattern. At the end of book 1, we have the two groups and their missions laid out before us. Group A (Sam and Frodo) will not be seen by Group B until A’s grand mission to destroy the Ring is concluded in book 3. Group B is going to rescue Merry and Pippin but we know Aragorn being heir to the throne will come up. We are set up!

By ‘make out’ I mean we aren’t concluding the series, we are complicating it. So book 2 is where we expand the world, and deepen or complicate the relationships or add new relationships (which can be romantic… or not, but how will they progress?), making things that seemed simpler in book 1 tangled.

So Aragorn is the heir to the throne of Gondor, which in book 1 caused interpersonal conflict with Boromir the steward/effective ruler of Gondor’s heir - book 2 asks what does this mean for Gondor, which has been kingless for centuries, steward Denethor, new heir Faramir, and what does all this mean for its neighbour Rohan, who have their own whole thing going on, and oh here is the lady Eowyn of Rohan, a lady not confined to the appendices, and she wants Aragorn. (Can be romantic… or not!) Pippin and Merry will be a camera into the orcs and the Ents, then join Group B in the Gondor and Rohan shenanigans, forming relationships with Denethor and Eowyn. (Expanding world, creating new or complicating relationships.)

Similarly, Sam and Frodo meet Faramir of Gondor, a bigger threat than Boromir in the taking the Ring stakes because Faramir has an armed force. And they meet Gollum, who was a terrible warning in book 1 but now is a (terrible) person who Sam and Frodo will go on to have 2 very different relationships with. IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not saying anyone should ever make out with Gollum.

Then consider the Hunger Games. At the end of Book 1, Katniss and Peeta have survived the Hunger Games by playing their roles as starcrossed lovers but by its nature the next Hunger Games will claim its next victims, and Katniss and Peeta are on the outs given the reality or lack thereof of their showmance. Set up!

Book 2 - new Hunger Games with all the old Victors of previous Hunger Games, which means we learn more about those games and the world, and the past. It isn’t just Katniss and Peeta vs the Hunger Games, the world has loads of people, there are conspiracies to take the Games down. Gale’s relationship with Katniss becomes explicitly romantic as it wasn’t in book 1, complicating matters extremely. Yet Peeta already romanced Katniss, how do we up the ante there and via the relationship explore the story’s themes? Oh Peeta upgrades their fake romance to a FAKE MARRIAGE AND A FAKE BABY. And a book 2 that is getting a book 3 can end on a note of suspense and darkness. Both the Two Towers and Catching Fire end with Sam/Katniss in despair, because Frodo/Peeta is in the hands of the enemy! And if you’ve done your work deepening the relationships that is even worse news than it would have been at the end of book 1.

Book 3 is relatively simple, it really just is ‘defeat evil.’ (Okay so with the Time of Iron series, I’ll need to change my plan to ‘defeat antagonist’…) It’s just the previous 2 books have to make that simple mission incredibly difficult. No but really how do they dismantle the Hunger Games! Will Frodo actually throw the Ring in Mount Doom? From everything we have seen in our fictional journey it just won’t be that simple…

They’re not hard and fast rules. Of course you’re deepening and complicating relationships in all three books, setting things up and suffering losses and winning victories in all three. But I’ve found this a useful guide for where to put your focus when planning a trilogy.

I initially planned the Time of Iron trilogy as a duology despite friends warning there was a LOT of story for the second book, because it is really hard to write book 3 with books out in the world. I’ve written two trilogies before and I found that the hardest thing. With book 2, you usually have the first draft at least in before book 1 is published, but book 3 you write knowing how the world is responding to book 1. Everyone I know who’s written a series has wished they could go back and change something in an already-published book, but has also been inspired to change things by responses to that book.

Because you never know. Before I tentatively planned Time of Iron as a duology, I thought of Long Live Evil as a stand-alone ‘with series potential.’ Which I knew perfectly well could mean the ending of Long Live Evil was the only ending. Yep, everything is pretty wrapped up, I thought.

Readers have not agreed that things are wrapped up!

So far the process for me of writing trilogies has always gone a bit like this.

Book 1 - wowwww I hope this gets published, it probably won’t, let me try and pull off my ideas for the story anyway.

Book 2 - oh my god book 1 is getting published, this is the sequel which will also be published, oh my god things are going so wrong, try to stay true to the story anyway.

Book 3 - the world has seen this series, and now I must wrap this baby up for myself and the world, and stick the story landing so the end rings true.

Some writers have meticulous plans. Some have meticulous plans they don’t follow. Most have the broad strokes of the plot to come but will need to fill in the details. I think of it as having the jewels but not the chain, and needing to make the links. There were definitely a few things I added last minute to Long Live Evil as my plans firmed up, and I’m sure it will be the same for All Hail Chaos. There are other things I’ve known all along, since the moment the story was born in my head. There are things I changed my mind about completely. (Stephen King intended the human characters to lose in ‘Salem’s Lot. It happens!)

Plans happen differently for every writer, as do edits. (Some writers’ favourite bit, my least favourite bit… until the moment the new story coheres. There was one HUGE thing I had to add to LLE in edits, and one huger thing I stood firm on not changing that everyone disagreed with me about, which was very scary. There’s one edit I made in a previous series I really regret. This stuff is hard and we all make mistakes.)

You’ll find your way. If you’re in the fog, keep going. If you know the stops to make when heading toward your destination, build bridges to them and if the bridges burn, ford the river. But yes, when planning a trilogy, I really do believe in set up, make out, defeat evil.

[sarahreesbrennan]

Quentin from the Magicians is a very lucky man.

RACHEL BROSNAHAN as LOIS LANE New Superman (2025) Trailer

[sarahreesbrennan]

My favourite Lois Lane since Teri Hatcher, and I will now link to my old livejournal to prove my lifelong devotion - talking about Lois Lane, Nellie Bly and how one learns to be a woman who keeps on living and keeps on talking.

(Superman Spoilers)

Lois Lane ragebaits Superman during an interview, pours half a container of sugar into about 4 ounces of coffee and dictates an article taking down lex luthor while driving a hovercraft. They nailed her. We are so back.

[sarahreesbrennan]

Practically Verbatim Quotes from the New Superman Movie

LEX LUTHOR: And so it is revealed. Superman plots to rule the world and is gathering together a superharem.

GATHERING OF WORLD LEADERS: That’s horrifying!

LEX LUTHOR: Right? And where was my invitation to the superharem?

WORLD LEADERS: Wait what.

LEX LUTHOR: Me, the greatest scientific genius the world has ever known? It’s disgusting.

WORLD LEADERS: Well, um, it’s not like you can propagate the Kryptonian species by bearing Superman children…

LEX LUTHOR: We’ll just see about that!

(Lex Luthor storms out)

WORLD LEADERS: I don’t know if that was a clever suggestion to make to the greatest scientific genius the world has ever known, World Leader Greg. I don’t know if you thought that one all the way through.

[sarahreesbrennan]

a) This Chinese drama A Dream Within A Dream about a chaotic lady actress falling into the TV show she’s starring in (with reflections thereof on tropes, reality and playing roles) seems potentially relevant to my and my readers’ interests. I shall be watching.

b) I am so thankful this came out after Long Live Evil. Stories and commonalities…

c) Called her boss but the clothes stayed on. I’ve let you all down. I’ve let MYSELF down.

d) Heh heh. Key moments.

Living the fangirl dream.

But also ahahahah

[sarahreesbrennan]

How much do you read the Villainess Reincarnation Genre of Manhwa? Long Live Evil feels like it took a lot of tropes from the genre and spun them on their head. It’s one of my favorites, and I was curious.

Thank you for the question and the kind comparison to your favourites. I hope my relative ignorance in this area will not disappoint, and I’m sorry (I scrolled up to add this apology so you wouldn’t have to read to the end here because I got thinking about inspiration…)

I must say honestly, I have not read a ton! I’m not at all a visual person, I’m a text harlot, and my eye will go to text and try to consume all the text first rather than as a combination with the art. I’m also this way about podcasts, only transcripts let me know what’s going on ever. I can’t visualise characters or settings, and I’m a bit faceblind too. (If I ever meet you and should know you, dear reader, please tell me. I once failed to recognise my mum in an unexpected context.) I am very open to recommendations and will always try, though.

The beloved C.S. Pacat gave me text scripts for the Fence graphic novels and it helped so much, and let me appreciate the art with the story already in my head.

But! Just because I haven’t read many doesn’t mean I was not inspired by them. Please read on for my many thoughts about inspiration…

I definitely WAS inspired by them and I don’t want to disclaim that. I have read novelised manhwa and light novels (I mentioned Tearmoon Empire in my LLE acknowledgments: recent favourites are Remarried Empress and Ascendancy of a Bookworm) to get these stories into my head in a way that will stick.

My inspiration comes through a circuitous route. I am a longtime fan of Korean dramas (the writers are mostly women and the series have endings rather than being cancelled by Netflix like everything we love…) and watching Extraordinary You, a kdrama in which its heroine realises her world is a manhwa and she a supporting character, was the thing that reminded me I wanted to write a going-into-a-book portal fantasy, and started me on Long Live Evil, which also started me on reading more in the genre. And Extraordinary You was an adaptation.

And thinking of adaptations (like Wicked the musical and movie, like Game of Thrones) led to me thinking of the changing nature of stories and how we want to change our own, and sometimes lash out because they weren’t what we hoped. So, Wicked. So, villainesses overturning hourglasses. So, Thomas Covenant (subtitle Dear God No Thomas Covenant Stop!). So, Marry My Husband. (Another adaptation, of which there is both a Korean and Japanese version, in which a lady goes back in time in her own life to displace her fated doom on another.)

Talking about inspiration is tricky for me for a number of reasons. (Note: I don’t think you were implying anything bad with your question, @pretty-boy-saint!)

One of which is I’ve seen people confidently say Long Live Evil is secretly fanfiction of a) a popular movie franchise (I have seen the movies and was thinking of one element in them, but not the one I see people point out) and b) a book by a NYT-bestselling writer (I hadn’t read it when I wrote LLE, it definitely does have going-into-a-book commonalities), one of whose other books is in my acknowledgements. Neither of which would be super sneaky of me, and neither is true, because if it was true I would just say so. No reason not to, I probably would’ve got paid more for transformed fanfiction than my ‘heyyyy portal fantasy with a million inspirations and a musical’, the transformed-fanfiction horse is out the barn door and running free across the surface of the moon. Books that started out as fanfiction about Kylo Ren and Rey, or Draco and Hermione, are all over bookshops and the writers are getting paid millions. And listen, absolutely no shade, those writers clearly worked hard on their writing, are very talented, found eager audiences and worked hard to transform the fanfiction into books. I applaud them. I do worry about how publishers present said books but that’s a different story. All my books for 16 years have been called secret fanfiction, I guess because I wrote fanfiction back in the pre-50 Shades days when it was more scandalous and was too open about it, so I have a Shady Reputation (sashays into the club trailing rumours like a villainess) even though at this stage it’s like saying ‘have you heard she eats toast.’ It is just one of those things that happens to me, and it used to bother me more than it does now. LLE isn’t adapted fanfiction but it does share commonalities with both those works and many others, and celebrates fanfiction and the transformative impulse. So it’s tricky as I don’t want to mislead, or seem to reject fanfiction.

A specific tricky thing is that as a white western writer reincarnation seemed like something it wasn’t my place to write about, so I did not. Going back into your old life and changing the cycle, or righting the wrongs of your old life as a new person, is such a great premise and I’ve very much enjoyed reading and watching such stories but I didn’t think I could add anything new to the greatness already there.

Another tricky thing is that when you talk about inspirations, people always think you mean different bits of the story than you do. (Many have spoken to me of Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan of the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, nobody has spoken to me of Xue Yang. I said villains and I meant villains…) So it’s tricky as even if I’m being open, I may mislead!

But here is the vital reason, for me, to talk about inspiration. We all get inspired. We stand on the shoulders of giants. We see the flame invented and run to make our own flame and light the beacons and build the fires to warm us all. The fires we tell stories around, and the stories live by transforming: look at Arthur and his knights, or Robin Hood. But I do see writers freaking out about other stories reminding them of their own, robbing their own stories of resonance by taking out echoes of stories they loved. I see readers condemning stories for that resonance, or feeling silly for having loved them. And I get it. I was in despair for days when a book was announced that sounded like it had a lot in common with Long Live Evil, and would get literally 50 times the budget. I tore out my hair going: oh lord I at least thought my weirdo story might stand out!

But it also makes me very sad to see this attitude because it’s not what I believe about inspiration at all. And I hate to see people cutting themselves off from joy.

Plus as you say, Long Live Evil is full of subverted tropes. I love to subvert a trope. I love to think about perfecting them. Tropes are from other stories, and learning to recognise tropes, put them in our own stories for others to recognise, and to play with them, means we’re all participating in a beautiful relay race. The trope baton may change shape like Tam Lin, but don’t drop it.

If I think a story is derivative of another story, without transforming it or adding something new? I probably won’t like it much, but that’s no big deal.

If a story reminds me of another story, and I love both stories and I see something new and something transformative? There is nothing I like more. Clapping and cheering. Delighted forever. Much Ado About Nothing led to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice led to Fire Island. Beowulf led to the Lord of the Rings. Norse myth led to the Marvel movie Thor 3. Elric led to A Song of Ice and Fire. The Count of Monte Cristo led to ABC’s Revenge. The Take On Me music video led to W: Two Worlds. Fingersmith led to the Handmaiden. Kushiel’s Dart and Black Jewels led to much popular current romantasy. Humans were built to dream and share. We build fantasy towers. We build bridges to each other.

So, Rae’s chapter titles in Long Live Evil are meant to be a nod to the villainesses wreaking havoc before mine.

So, inspiration comes from many many places and must be celebrated, and that’s what Long Live Evil is about and what I’m about.

[sarahreesbrennan]

I will not tell you that, but I will promise you we see what is going down in Ivor’s court.

The ice raiders were a touch of chaos at the end of LLE, but in AHC they have to be people, and for the epic fantasy of it all, people of another land with its own gods and magic. So, I can’t wait for you all to meet Princess Vasilisa’s brother, King Ivor the Heartless.

…. And I can’t wait for you all to meet the count.

(Ominous foreshadowing? Who, me?)

will book 2 in the Time of Iron series have Key, Lia, and Cobra povs instead? or will there be more than three?

There will be more than three POVs in All Hail Chaos.

I won’t be changing POVs though! I did that in the Demon’s Lexicon, my very first series, and it would take very compelling story reasons for me to do it again. Rae, Marius and Emer will all continue to have POVs. They were my first eyes into the world, and the conflicts in their hearts are the conflicts at the heart of the story.

But Time of Iron is a love letter to epic fantasy, among which I’m thinking of A Song of Ice and Fire and Robin Hobb’s The Liveship Traders. (I’m trying to talk more about inspiration on a granular level, though people ((people generally, not you, dear readers!)) never believe writers when they talk about inspiration, so this may be a mug’s game.) POV changes in epic fantasy deepen and enrich the world, and let you cover more ground in it, too.

Several readers have been very surprised about the other POVs in All Hail Chaos. I told one reader at the London Comic Con about a POV (if you get me in person I’ll tell you anything…) and I’m pretty sure they still think I was joking.

I wasn’t.

[sarahreesbrennan]

will book 2 in the Time of Iron series have Key, Lia, and Cobra povs instead? or will there be more than three?

There will be more than three POVs in All Hail Chaos.

I won’t be changing POVs though! I did that in the Demon’s Lexicon, my very first series, and it would take very compelling story reasons for me to do it again. Rae, Marius and Emer will all continue to have POVs. They were my first eyes into the world, and the conflicts in their hearts are the conflicts at the heart of the story.

But Time of Iron is a love letter to epic fantasy, among which I’m thinking of A Song of Ice and Fire and Robin Hobb’s The Liveship Traders. (I’m trying to talk more about inspiration on a granular level, though people ((people generally, not you, dear readers!)) never believe writers when they talk about inspiration, so this may be a mug’s game.) POV changes in epic fantasy deepen and enrich the world, and let you cover more ground in it, too.

Several readers have been very surprised about the other POVs in All Hail Chaos. I told one reader at the London Comic Con about a POV (if you get me in person I’ll tell you anything…) and I’m pretty sure they still think I was joking.

I wasn’t.