Storytellers Unplugged, November

[truepenny]

"Of Scullery Boys and Kings," my Storytellers Unplugged essay for November, is up.

Comments

[lferion]

Cool!

And, I would really like to read Tam's story ....

[gerbilicous.livejournal.com]

I would like to read all their stories. Your ideas are so amazing!

[karenthology.livejournal.com]

I totally agree!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I can see it coming out somewhat like the Steerpike-centric bits of Gormenghast, fwiw.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I hope I don't have it in me to write any characters as relentlessly loathsome as Steerpike, but yeah. I see what you mean.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this link. I like the way you think about it. And I think with all of those potential characters' stories, even as you break the convention and avoid the stereotype, there's enough of the convention recognizable to the reader, even just atmospherically, that the story is still resonates for the reader in a comforting way even while it surprises her.

Oddly enough, my (unfinished, bad me!) NaNoWriMo novel has a 15 year old girl with a mysterious past that receives a significant locket she can't open. In fact, the title of the novel is "The Faerie Locket." But it's set in our world AND a secondary world at the same time. And she's not a queen.

Finally, just to introduce myself, I just recently started reading your journal via Bear, and after my friend Pamelia recently loaned me Melusine, which I'm not done with yet but am enjoying very much. I really like your journal and am slowly making my way backwards through your posts.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

One of these years I'm going to get my thoughts on the precise fine line between a Steerpike and a Count of Monte Cristo into some sort of coherent enough form to write up. I'm not, myself, inclined to see Steerpike as a qualitatively different category of loathsome from, say, Gully Foyle, and I think that the hinge point at which Steerpike's plans start to fall apart is unsatisfying in a way related to, but different from, the way that the Count of Monte Cristo's eventual turning aside from his revenge is unsatisfying.

I think Steerpike's remarkable competence is the principal thing that makes him more complex a character than "unmitigatedly loathsome" in my eyes. I also have suspicions about underlying political notions in the Gormenghast books and Peake being to some extent of the devil's party without knowing it, but that really needs me to reread the darned things.

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

I have a tendency to avoid the scullery boy trope. I guess I've read enough to know when the opening scene is young mister/miss whining about their provincial life(ives) --- to know where there story is going.
I don't think it's the scullery boy trope per se... but maybe the overuse of the whiney scullery boy type.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I probably should have clarified that I find everyone in Gormenghast relentlessly loathsome--part of (whether cause or effect I'm not sure) the unutterably dreary Sunday-afternoon-in-Hell mood that permeates the whole thing. I wasn't intending to single out Steerpike in that regard.

(I admire Peake intensely, mind you, but oh dear GOD. I gave up about a third of the way through Gormenghast because slitting my wrists was honestly looking like a better time.)