Uggg, When Thursday?!?

[davidgillon]

That annoying thing when you wake up pre-dawn and two hours later it's still pre-dawn and you realise you're 12 hours out.

And then two hours later realise it's not the day you thought it was either.

I had to check the modification date on a file I knew I saved earlier to confirm I haven't entirely missed Friday, which means I was so tired Thursday and Friday have merged together in my head. I can vaguely remember thinking I must check Friday's webcomics, which is more confirmation, but I don't think I managed to actually do that. It also explains why there was one less helping of soup in the fridge than I expected at lunchtime.

I can sort of piece it together, Thurday night's sleep was more two or three hours trying to doze followed by eventually giving up and going downstairs, rather than actual sleep, but that led to a crash-dive onto the couch sometime late-afternoon, and staggering to bed sometime after dark. When I woke up and the alarm said 6:30 I definitely thought that was AM, not PM, so at this point I'm really, really glad I rolled over and slept another hour.

But that still means I may only have had 4 hours sleep in the last 56(?) hours.

I'm not sure I'll manage to get back into a proper sleeping rhythm, and at this point I'd even settle for nocturnally awake, until I'm rid of this damned cold, which is clinging on by the claws in the back of my throat and proving annoyingly difficult to get rid of. It's really not much more than sniffles and a cough, but just enough to disturb you as you drift towards sleep.

Meh!!!
 

Comments

[davidgillon]

Yeah, I'm not a great fan of Le Guin either, though I've not analysed it in enough detail to be quite clear on why. I made a determined effort to read more of her at one point, and it never went anywhere. But given I profess to be interested in ethics in SF I do think I need to read Those Who Walk Away at some point - it's sort of a set text for that aspect of things!

I think the moral issues in the trilogy are coming through, the problem is that the ethical cost of Kujen's system is so high, based on Hexarchate-wide regular torture festivals, and what that does to both victims and victimisers, that even the death count implied by a Hexarchate-wide civil war is likely to be overturned in a relatively short time by the number of people not being sacrified to Kujen's ego.

There's two ways you can look at the Mwennin, either that Cheris put them in the firing line, or that they're symbolic of the vulnerability of any minority in Kujen's system. You're never very far from finding yourself declared the newest set of heretics. It's a really telling example of the vulnerability of being Other. But Cheris is the kind who would figure out the likely cost, and decide it needed doing anyway, no matter the personal cost - pure Suicide Hawk thinking.

Jedao is, of course, more morally ambiguous. He seems to decide the system has to go because his poking the system with the heresy game, which illustrates he already saw the flaws in it, leads to the death of his best friend. There's a personal element in it and we never know quite how much was revenge, because he immediately moves to protect his friends by not having any close enough to use against him. There's an almost religious kind of fervour at work there.

[yhlee]

There's a reason Cheris is the protagonist and not Jedao. One of the Goodreads reviewers wanted the novel to have been told in chronological order--so, starting with Jedao as a cadet and moving onward from that, and then becoming basically "plucky Jedao vs. the Evil Empire." But I think it would have been much more of an antihero story unless a ton of plot details changed, and it would, if possible, have been even more of a downer/tragedy ending given Hellspin.

I have always thought of Jedao as someone who really tends to think in black-and-white terms. I designed Mikodez to be sort of Jedao's alternate in the Shuos--someone who sees everything in shades of gray, to the point where he's even willing to work with Kujen for decades and is possibly the closest thing Kujen has to a BFF, only to then be willing to turn against Kujen. I also designed Mikodez specifically to nerf Jedao. The original Jedao is terrified of Mikodez because Mikodez doesn't give one fig that Jedao's a supergeneral--so what? Mikodez has minions.

You might be amused to learn that in the very first draft of Ninefox, back when Jedao was a pure sociopath and not "just" a messed-up dude, Ruo wasn't even his best friend. He was J. Random Cadet whom Jedao didn't even know well who happened to run afoul of the heresy game. When Jedao was in danger of getting caught having designed the game, he pushed Ruo to suicide to get rid of, so to speak, the evidence.

[davidgillon]

starting with Jedao as a cadet and moving onward from that, and then becoming basically "plucky Jedao vs. the Evil Empire.

Oh God, that's like rewriting Star Wars so that Anakin deliberately became Vader, and did all the unspeakable things he did, in order to take down the Empire! One of the parts that really struck me in re-reading Ninefox over Christmas was when Jedao thought he was about to die and told his fellow Shuos about his plan, then they're saved and he realises he has to kill him. Hellspin is that, only a million times over.

But of course Jedao says he only committed to Hellspring after considering aligning with the Lanterners, and realising they were at least as bad as the Heptarchate - he might have sociopathic leanings, but he's a sociopath with a moral compass.

It is a tragedy, because the only way to stop the system killing people is to engineer a civil war and cause the death of millions of innocents. And it's still the right thing to do.

I think you nail it with that passage about Jedao being a black and white thinker and Mikodez a shades of grey thinker. Mikodez is undoubtedly the better choice for Shuos-Zho, because Jedao in power would not be a good thing, while Mikodez is ready to compromised when it gets the job done. Of course he's also willing to be ruthless when it gets the job done, but that's simply the darkest shade of grey. (And he doesn't just show it over Kujen, but over the cadets and over his sister).

When Jedao was in danger of getting caught having designed the game, he pushed Ruo to suicide to get rid of, so to speak, the evidence.

To be honest I could see even this Jedao doing that, if it was the only alternative. I did wonder, re-reading Ninefox, whether Jedao had deliberately provoked the carrion bomb attack by telling Cheris to include all her workings in the appendix to her final report, which is what tells Kujen she's really a threat to him. The only downside is he only gets one chance to roll the dice, and after that everything is up to Cheris reacting in the way he has primed her. I think it can be read either way.

(And don't worry, keeping me entertained, not keeping me up. Though I think it's time to go soak in a hot bath and see if that helps)

[yhlee]

(Also, yikes, I hope you can get some sleep soon and not be responding to my random comments! ;] )