danielle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shrimpchipsss) wrote2023-07-01 06:06 pm
shrimpchipsss) wrote2023-07-01 06:06 pm
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The Farseer Trilogy: I think your wolf boy has PTSD
A few things I want to remember about the Farseer Trilogy which I started at the beginning of the year.
I said at the beginning of 2022 that I’d start my Diana Wynne Jones arc but that was thrown off by the Queen’s Thief books which is maybe fitting as Megan Whalen Turner is a known DWJ fan. And then I said this again in 2023 but then Robin Hobb.
Man. I love these books. I’m currently on Ship of Magic (the beginning of the subsequent trilogy) which is slow going because I can’t stand hearing Kyle’s dialogue spoken out loud in audiobook form. So jarring to have a bonafide misogynist character, though it really illustrates the social degradation happening in Bingtown in the form of slavery and the patriarchy.
But to go back to the Farseer books. One of the things that I think Robin Hobb does really well is writing disorientation. If you know me you know I love an unreliable narrator (Eugenides, Shen Qingqiu). Now we have Fitzchivalry Farseer. The poor boy’s self perception and self esteem are only destroyed further by elfbark, a substance taken by skill users to give them a power and focus boost which leaves you, frankly, a husk of a person after the effects wear off.
You spend most of the three books hearing over and over again that elfbark dulls your senses and leads to you making bad decisions over time but the magnitude of the warning isn’t put to scale until well into the third book when Kettle reveals that skill users in the golden era of skill coteries would avoid it like the plague.
Suddenly the trudging hopelessness (especially in Assassin’s Quest dear LORD) and Fitz’s blundering is put into perspective. No wonder you’re a shit assassin! Your brain isn’t working at full capacity because you’re drugged up! No wonder everything feels terrible and like things will never be good again, you are in herb-induced depression!
It’s one thing to know about the effects of elfbark but I hadn’t considered how its effects on our poor narrator would temper the way we as readers experienced Fitz’s daily life.
As for non-elfbark related narration though, one day I will go back and reread these books and I will savor the way disoriented perception of events, whether in dreams, in skill visions, or in day to day happenings, are written. As a reader, it’s delicious.
People who know me also know that my favorite stories are ones with great ensemble casts, especially when the writer makes full use of the web of relationships between all of the characters. And this…
It’s so funny. I spent the entire Farseer trilogy thinking that the thing between Chivalry (the king-in-waiting and Fitz’s father) and Burrich (Chivalry’s stablemaster) and Patience (the queen-in-waiting and Burrich’s first love); and between Fitz and his first love Molly and Patience who Molly becomes a maid for and Burrich who practically raises Fitz; and between Verity (Fitz’s uncle and the king) and his wife Kettricken and Fitz, were all super compelling, very very fascinating, just wow the way these characters are acting as avatars for each other from the base of the original erotic triangle between Burrich and Chivalry and Patience.
NEVER did I think that these straight people Eve Sedgwick homosocial triangles would actually FULFILL THEMSELVES??? And maybe it’s because these are straight person erotic triangles that the object or avatar you are pursuing in the place of your true partner gets to turn into a real relationship as in the case of Burrich and Molly, or is forced upon the avatar as in the case of Fitz acting as Verity to Kettricken. Which I have to say is the most fucked up and awful version of this I could imagine.
There’s not much I can add to this other than oh my god??? And if you’ve read the books and were as gutted and awed and grief-horror-mourning-stricken over it all, especially the fucking triangles please let us have a drink together.
Fitzchivalry Farseer and the way that your life is not your own.
I said at the beginning of 2022 that I’d start my Diana Wynne Jones arc but that was thrown off by the Queen’s Thief books which is maybe fitting as Megan Whalen Turner is a known DWJ fan. And then I said this again in 2023 but then Robin Hobb.
Man. I love these books. I’m currently on Ship of Magic (the beginning of the subsequent trilogy) which is slow going because I can’t stand hearing Kyle’s dialogue spoken out loud in audiobook form. So jarring to have a bonafide misogynist character, though it really illustrates the social degradation happening in Bingtown in the form of slavery and the patriarchy.
But to go back to the Farseer books. One of the things that I think Robin Hobb does really well is writing disorientation. If you know me you know I love an unreliable narrator (Eugenides, Shen Qingqiu). Now we have Fitzchivalry Farseer. The poor boy’s self perception and self esteem are only destroyed further by elfbark, a substance taken by skill users to give them a power and focus boost which leaves you, frankly, a husk of a person after the effects wear off.
You spend most of the three books hearing over and over again that elfbark dulls your senses and leads to you making bad decisions over time but the magnitude of the warning isn’t put to scale until well into the third book when Kettle reveals that skill users in the golden era of skill coteries would avoid it like the plague.
Suddenly the trudging hopelessness (especially in Assassin’s Quest dear LORD) and Fitz’s blundering is put into perspective. No wonder you’re a shit assassin! Your brain isn’t working at full capacity because you’re drugged up! No wonder everything feels terrible and like things will never be good again, you are in herb-induced depression!
It’s one thing to know about the effects of elfbark but I hadn’t considered how its effects on our poor narrator would temper the way we as readers experienced Fitz’s daily life.
As for non-elfbark related narration though, one day I will go back and reread these books and I will savor the way disoriented perception of events, whether in dreams, in skill visions, or in day to day happenings, are written. As a reader, it’s delicious.
People who know me also know that my favorite stories are ones with great ensemble casts, especially when the writer makes full use of the web of relationships between all of the characters. And this…
It’s so funny. I spent the entire Farseer trilogy thinking that the thing between Chivalry (the king-in-waiting and Fitz’s father) and Burrich (Chivalry’s stablemaster) and Patience (the queen-in-waiting and Burrich’s first love); and between Fitz and his first love Molly and Patience who Molly becomes a maid for and Burrich who practically raises Fitz; and between Verity (Fitz’s uncle and the king) and his wife Kettricken and Fitz, were all super compelling, very very fascinating, just wow the way these characters are acting as avatars for each other from the base of the original erotic triangle between Burrich and Chivalry and Patience.
NEVER did I think that these straight people Eve Sedgwick homosocial triangles would actually FULFILL THEMSELVES??? And maybe it’s because these are straight person erotic triangles that the object or avatar you are pursuing in the place of your true partner gets to turn into a real relationship as in the case of Burrich and Molly, or is forced upon the avatar as in the case of Fitz acting as Verity to Kettricken. Which I have to say is the most fucked up and awful version of this I could imagine.
There’s not much I can add to this other than oh my god??? And if you’ve read the books and were as gutted and awed and grief-horror-mourning-stricken over it all, especially the fucking triangles please let us have a drink together.
Fitzchivalry Farseer and the way that your life is not your own.