Path of Daggers
Aug. 9th, 2010 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackFaile and Perrin
Many people are annoyed by Perrin and Faile's endless communication failures. They go like this:
Perrin: treats Faile like she needs to be protected, or is made uncomfortable by Berelain's flirtation.
Faile: gets really angry
Perrin: apologises
Faile: is annoyed Perrin apologises meekly without knowing what's wrong, and refuses to explain, and gets more and more angry
All: repeat
When I first read it, I instinctively empathised with Perrin, and hence assumed you were supposed to see Faile's reaction as reasonable, but instead found them exasperating. You could sum up this view as "Why doesn't Faile just tell Perrin what she wants instead of constantly hoping he'll just magically guess." I think most people saw it the same way.
However, this is not necessarily fair. I think it's clear Jordan intends this dynamic to be seen as unhealthy, and even tragic.
In the tor.com readthrough, Leigh Butler makes the interesting point that Faile does her best to hide her feelings, and in many cases its only Perrin's enhanced senses that make it clear to him that she IS angry. I don't think that's the whole story, as plenty of times she does act plainly angry, but there's a lot of truth that she's shown as trying to work with Perrin on his own terms, she's just not that good at it.
The other thing, pointed out in my summary above, is that Faile wants to be treated like an equal: her plans and opinions taken seriously, and not just dismissed because Perrin wants to keep her safe, which actually happens quite a lot. We're so used to this dynamic in fantasy novels we rarely see it, but if you read what's written, she does have very legitimate annoyances of her own.
So, I see Faile an incredible amount more sympathetically than I did at first. But I still have the feeling that there's nothing NEW added to the plot, and that even though there's perfectly good reasons for it to happen, I don't want to read 15 books of "Perrin: Talk to me. Faile: No."
Morgase and Tallanvor/Perrin
Leigh also pointed out that Morgase, after being tortured and betrayed by Whitecloaks, has very good reasons (both emotional and somewhat logical) for not accepting her love for Tallanvor, or for trusting a foreign power of unknown intent.
So it's not unreasonable, not arbitrarily difficult that she continues to hide her identity. But because we know that mutual attraction in fantasy novels normally ends up getting married, and that the disposition of Caemlyn will almost certainly depend on Rand and Elayne's relationship and ability to rule it in a surviving-the-last-battle-consistent way without stepping on each other's toes, we expect Morgase's quite reasonable paranoia not to matter, which sort of undermines it.
Many people are annoyed by Perrin and Faile's endless communication failures. They go like this:
Perrin: treats Faile like she needs to be protected, or is made uncomfortable by Berelain's flirtation.
Faile: gets really angry
Perrin: apologises
Faile: is annoyed Perrin apologises meekly without knowing what's wrong, and refuses to explain, and gets more and more angry
All: repeat
When I first read it, I instinctively empathised with Perrin, and hence assumed you were supposed to see Faile's reaction as reasonable, but instead found them exasperating. You could sum up this view as "Why doesn't Faile just tell Perrin what she wants instead of constantly hoping he'll just magically guess." I think most people saw it the same way.
However, this is not necessarily fair. I think it's clear Jordan intends this dynamic to be seen as unhealthy, and even tragic.
In the tor.com readthrough, Leigh Butler makes the interesting point that Faile does her best to hide her feelings, and in many cases its only Perrin's enhanced senses that make it clear to him that she IS angry. I don't think that's the whole story, as plenty of times she does act plainly angry, but there's a lot of truth that she's shown as trying to work with Perrin on his own terms, she's just not that good at it.
The other thing, pointed out in my summary above, is that Faile wants to be treated like an equal: her plans and opinions taken seriously, and not just dismissed because Perrin wants to keep her safe, which actually happens quite a lot. We're so used to this dynamic in fantasy novels we rarely see it, but if you read what's written, she does have very legitimate annoyances of her own.
So, I see Faile an incredible amount more sympathetically than I did at first. But I still have the feeling that there's nothing NEW added to the plot, and that even though there's perfectly good reasons for it to happen, I don't want to read 15 books of "Perrin: Talk to me. Faile: No."
Morgase and Tallanvor/Perrin
Leigh also pointed out that Morgase, after being tortured and betrayed by Whitecloaks, has very good reasons (both emotional and somewhat logical) for not accepting her love for Tallanvor, or for trusting a foreign power of unknown intent.
So it's not unreasonable, not arbitrarily difficult that she continues to hide her identity. But because we know that mutual attraction in fantasy novels normally ends up getting married, and that the disposition of Caemlyn will almost certainly depend on Rand and Elayne's relationship and ability to rule it in a surviving-the-last-battle-consistent way without stepping on each other's toes, we expect Morgase's quite reasonable paranoia not to matter, which sort of undermines it.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 12:03 pm (UTC)Perrin is frequently a jerk to Faile, although I think it's clear he's mostly stupid rather than evil. I think it's really obnoxious of him to not tell her about his super smell powers, if he is unavoidable breaking her privacy like that the least he could do is TELL HER.