Goblin Thoughts

You might know me from Mastodon! Here lie the thoughts of an enby goblin, posted largely for my own reference and also for you, I guess.

#Goblinfynder

Goblinfynder is, like all goblins, short of stature and long of limb. They stand somewhere between 3 and 4 feet tall with the lanky, bony arms and legs typical of their kind. Their knobby fingers end in long, slightly pointed nails (always painted!). Their hands and feet are just slightly too large to be proportional to their body but they do not look ungainly for it. Their head, too, seems ever so slightly larger than it ought to be and more oval-shaped than a human head, though, again, this does not slow them down. Their skin is a rich, mossy green. Their torso can best be described as “wiry;” A shock of long, curly, slightly-tangled dark-brown hair grows from the top of their head, the right side of which is shaved close but not to the scalp. The shaved section does not quite reach the top of their head and the effect is rather like they have a side-part in their hair. Their cheeks are covered in scruffy hair which almost reaches the corners of their mouth. Their eyes are large and round but have a peculiar habit of appearing very angular when Mischief Is Afoot; the sclera is white, the irises are red, and the pupils are round. Their ears are long and pointed, extending outwards from the side of their head, and are adorned with numerous piercings. Their nose is noticeable, though not overly large, and pointed without much of a hook or an upturn, though there is a place on the bridge which bears evidence of a break, particularly when viewed in profile. Their mouth is wide and many sharp teeth are visible when they smile, which is often; even when their mouth is closed one canine can still be seen poking out. Their tongue is slightly pointed and juuuust longer than it should be.

They can be conceptualized in one of two ways: either as a Fantasy Goblin from a novel such as The Hobbit or as a traditional anthrosona wearing contemporary clothing. Both shall be described below.

Fantasy Goblin: This conceptualization of Goblinfynder wears a tattered light-brown leather jerkin with pointed cap-sleeves double-crossed at the chest by dark-brown leather straps. Their head is covered by a brown hood which entirely obscures their face in shadow; only their red eyes can be seen, glowing in the darkness. When they smile, their teeth can also be seen, and the grin feels much more dangerous when it is all you can see. Their ears stick out from slits cut in the side of the hood; there are no piercings. At their waist hangs a leather belt with two wicked-looking daggers hanging from it, one on each side, and a number of small pockets and pouches. The daggers have no sheaths but rather hang unprotected from loops on the belt. They wear dirty brown shorts made of some nondescript cloth which reach roughly halfway to the knees and end in torn and ragged edges. Their feet are covered in shapeless leather shoes having no sole or lacing to speak of.

Hipster Goblin: This conceptualization of Goblinfynder is often seen wearing black t-shirts bearing the logo and artwork of heavy metal bands (Iron Maiden being a favourite) underneath long-sleeve flannel shirts paired with blue jeans and black combat boots with yellow laces. In warm weather the flannel is tied around their waist instead. They wear a number of necklaces bearing metal charms, glass beads, feathers, claws, teeth, and other totemic artifacts. They are often seen wearing subtle eye makeup. They wear a small backpack slung over both shoulders. Their glasses have rectangular lenses and relatively thick frames. They often wear a pair of headphones around their neck; how they wear them without hurting their ears is a mystery but they seem to manage, though they do end up pressed up against the side of their head rather than pointing outward.

Goblinfynder is an easygoing and fun-loving goblin, though often that sense of “fun” can come at the expense of others; they are something of a prankster and often make jokes at inappropriate moments to try and lighten a mood or diffuse tension. They are also rather sentimental and keep various treasures and keepsakes on them and have been known to pick up rocks or sticks which catch their eye and carry them around absentmindedly. They smile more often than not and have a noticeable bounce to their gait when they walk.

On Marie Brennan's “A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir of Lady Trent”

Oftentimes there is a marked dissonance between how a book tries to sell itself and the realities of that book. I don't believe anyone in particular is to blame here; attempting to sum up a hundreds-of-pages-long novel in 2 VERY short paragraphs must be a daunting task and I do not envy those whose jobs it is to write cover blurbs, but still this fact remains. Sometimes a book is simply not what you thought it was going to be.

Such was the case for me with A Natural History of Dragons. The blurb on the back cover is ridiculously short; only 4 sentences in all (all the better to leave space for the starred reviews!), which makes it very hard to properly convey what, precisely, this book actually is. Based on the blurb and the reviews, I knew it was written in a memoir style similar to that of the Victorian Age and I gathered that the setting would be much the same (and I welcomed a chance not to read ANOTHER medieval fantasy story), but what the cover fails to mention is just how low-magic the setting actually is. It makes mention of the fact that the protagonist is a dragon naturalist, which sets certain expectations about the content of the story; one should expect a bit more of a soft sci-fi approach to the subject matter than other fantasy novels would apply as one follows Isabella, Lady Trent, on her quest to document Facts About Dragons and record them in a scientific manner. However, aside from dragons, there are no fantastical elements to the story. In many ways, this is not a fantasy novel at all, it is merely a fictional memoir from an Earth AU where dragons are real. Now, of course, there are different places and marginally different cultures from our world, but the worldbuilding is so sparse that it does almost nothing to prevent the reader from simply inserting [closest real world equivalent] into the story.

So, there wasn't much fantasy and the worldbuilding was rather lackluster. Neither of those are REALLY why I came to a book about studying dragons in the wild, I wanted to read fictionalized accounts of natural science studying dragons. The great shame is that a ridiculously small portion of the novel is actually devoted to doing natural science about dragons. There are a few chapters devoted to a small expedition into the mountains which involves killing and dissecting a dragon for study but a large part of the novel is dedicated to exploring Fantasy Victorian Times in a very unengaging way. I think the book has 3 total asides where Isabella, Lady Trent pauses everything to write a paragraph about how she feels no shame in writing about sexual topics because “it's only natural,” while also ignoring the fact that she never so much as says the word “sex” in the entire manuscript. How transgressive! Multiple times conversations are paused to apologize for “coarse language” to the lady in the company and events are put on hold to argue about whether or not it would be “proper” for a woman to go and do such-and-such.

Now, I understand the basic idea behind these interruptions about Society and a Woman's Place Therein, but the novel doesn't put in the work to make it clear that these are things being criticized. They are merely presented as The Way Things Are. Isabella, Lady Trent herself seems quite beholden to various standard Victorian hangups, going so far as to refuse to enter the sauna around local women. So it reaches a point where the reader is left to wonder whether we are meant to understand these as criticisms of Victorian social mores in the first place or whether we should simply accept them as a matter of course and not think too much about them.

The novel, as I found out near the end, is actually supposed to be a mystery story, not a fantasy story NOR a natural science field journal, but while in retrospect I can absolutely see where the seeds of the mystery were being sown, I did not, in the moment, pick up on them and say “Hm, this is an intriguing puzzle! I bet we will see it solved by the end!” Mostly I reached the end, saw the mystery solved with almost no actual legwork put in by anyone, and realized “Oh. This was a mystery story.” Not exactly the most satisfying conclusion to a 300-page mystery.

Honestly I don't have tons to say about this one. I could talk about how gross and casual the book was about colonialism, how there was a lot of casual racism and xenophobia to deal with, how frustrating it was to listen to men be very misogynistic with a woman standing in the room, but I feel like all those things get summed up when you read the phrase “Victorian Times.” Ultimately, this was a book more concerned with Victorian Times than it was with dragons.

Can't say I agree.

It's always hard coming to the end of a book series.

Even though this was only a duology and, thus, hasn't taken up the space in my life that certain longer series have in the past (Chronicles of the Necromancer springs to mind), Karen Miller's “Kingmaker, Kingbreaker” series is one I'm having trouble saying good-bye to this evening.

I bought both books, “The Innocent Mage” and “The Awakened Mage,” about 4 years ago (that can't be right, can it? Christ I'm getting old...) and absolutely devoured the first book. The characters were so well-realized, the politicking was -just- prominent enough to be interesting without turning into “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the magic, oh! the magic! Steeped in mystery, clearly following rules, but never quite reaching a point where those rules all made sense. If there's one thing Miller knows how to do, it's give the reader just enough information to be DYING for more while never oversharing and ruining that desire. I couldn't tell you how long it took me to read Book 1, but it can't have been long; a few weeks maybe. I jumped right into Book 2 as soon as I was finished (I doubt I even took a break before cracking it open, honestly) and then...put it down.

I have no memory of why I stopped reading Book 2. My current theory is that I literally put the book down one day and just never picked it back up. Not out of disinterest or malice or anything of the sort, but I was in school and homework and socializing and the ill-advised relationship I had found myself in at the time likely took over. Eventually I started to think that there must have been SOME reason why I stopped reading; maybe Book 2 was actually really bad and I had given up in disgust. The mind is funny in the connections it will convince itself of with literally no basis in fact. And so the books sat on my shelf for years and years, moving across the country to sit on a different shelf in a new state, slowly collecting dust until a few months ago when I said to myself “You know what? It's time to give that series another shot!”

And now here I am, finally on the other side of a series I started reading so long ago it might as well have been another lifetime. In terms of reading time, these books are easily dwarfed by other series I've read, but in terms of total elapsed calendar time, these 2 700-page novels are far and away THE longest I've spent getting from one side to another of a book series.

In a way, another tie to that part of my life is now severed.