Insta rec: podcast

[jainas]

I just listened to the excellent two first episodes of Be The Serpent, a fanish podcast of “extremely deep literary merit” (^^) which I found very interesting.

The first episode discusses Those who walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin, and the conversation the fic Victory Condition by Astolat has with it, but also how it is linked to genres such Hopepunk, Grimdark, and Noblebright. Excellents analysis, I found if really insightful and interesting, they pointed out stuff I hadn't considered both in Le Guin and Astolat works, and they managed to make me love Victory Condition even more, which I didn’t think was possible.

The second episode is about characters taxionomy, daemons, Hoghart houses, the Sorting Hat Chats... I never had much interest for the sorting system, but they introduced me to the concept of primary/ secondary houses, burned houses, and had interesting points on how personality classification systems can be a fun and useful writing tool.

Comments

[mekare]

Oh that sounds like a great podcast, thanks for the rec!

[jainas]

It is great! I'm now up to episode 5 and still going strong.
Episode 5 is about fealty and loyalty tropes, so totally relevant to my interests... I seem to have much of the same tastes as some of the hosts. :D

[mekare]

Mmh fealty and loyalty, I‘m up for that.

[jainas]

So much! :) Let me now when/if you listen to the podcast, I'd love to hear what you thought about it.
I was sad the fancake Loyalty round didn't get more fic recs... ^^

[mekare]

I‘ve just listened to the first episode and must thank you again for the rec! This was so absolutely my thing and very thoughtprovoking and educational! I know lots of literary theory, unfortunately none of my courses at uni back then dealt with fantasy (only so-called classical literature). I am definitely going to hunt up LeGuin‘s short story and am looking forward to applying the new concepts of hopepunk etc. to other fantasy that I know.

[jainas]

Here it is! https://www.utilitarianism.com/nu/omelas.pdf :)

A lot of Astolat Transformer fics are actually about Omelas ("The Revolutionary" strongly works the themes too), and I found that keeping it in mind while reading the fics made them even better...

I'm glad you enjoyed the podcast!

[mekare]

Thank you! I read it and it is such a powerful story.