The Ink Readers of Doi Saket
Jul. 11th, 2014 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThe Ink Readers of Doi Saket
I really liked the setting, I liked the concept of the village reading and recording the wishes set adrift in the river, and that there was a story in a non-western setting where people were just ordinary people.
But people who knew more about the setting than me said it definitely felt a bit appropriative. And after a short while, all the humour like "X did Y, which was said to cause Z, though of course no-one believes that any more. A year later, Z happened to him, but that's not important right now," started to feel a bit forced.
Inspired by this story but not necessarily about it
The wishes written and thrown into the river are said to come true. And many of them do, if not always exactly as you'd expect. It seems some of them come true by subterfuge, and some of them come true through coincidence (but many more than you might statistically expect throughout the course of the story) and some come true through magic, maybe. I think the story overdoes it, but I think it's something that can work very well, if the author doesn't try too hard to set up rules exactly when it will and it won't: in Babylon Five, when wishes made to Morden eventually come true through Morden's scheming, even if not to his intend or advantage; in Tolkien, when trusting Gandalf and Fate and Goodness and Manwe makes everything turn out well, even if the mechanism for that is obscure; in Shakespeare, when the witches give a true-but-obscure prophecy to Macbeth.
When I first read Macbeth, I was confused -- why did the witches do that? If they could tell the future, why weren't they more systematic about it? And if not, how did they know exactly what would happen? But now I think it's something that can happen in stories sometimes even if it's unrealistic.
I really liked the setting, I liked the concept of the village reading and recording the wishes set adrift in the river, and that there was a story in a non-western setting where people were just ordinary people.
But people who knew more about the setting than me said it definitely felt a bit appropriative. And after a short while, all the humour like "X did Y, which was said to cause Z, though of course no-one believes that any more. A year later, Z happened to him, but that's not important right now," started to feel a bit forced.
Inspired by this story but not necessarily about it
The wishes written and thrown into the river are said to come true. And many of them do, if not always exactly as you'd expect. It seems some of them come true by subterfuge, and some of them come true through coincidence (but many more than you might statistically expect throughout the course of the story) and some come true through magic, maybe. I think the story overdoes it, but I think it's something that can work very well, if the author doesn't try too hard to set up rules exactly when it will and it won't: in Babylon Five, when wishes made to Morden eventually come true through Morden's scheming, even if not to his intend or advantage; in Tolkien, when trusting Gandalf and Fate and Goodness and Manwe makes everything turn out well, even if the mechanism for that is obscure; in Shakespeare, when the witches give a true-but-obscure prophecy to Macbeth.
When I first read Macbeth, I was confused -- why did the witches do that? If they could tell the future, why weren't they more systematic about it? And if not, how did they know exactly what would happen? But now I think it's something that can happen in stories sometimes even if it's unrealistic.