Mayhaps Comparisons Will Aid Thee

Two words I wish I had used in yesterday's post: "Jocularity" and "scuttlebutt".

Moving forward, when I reviewed Patsy Walker: Hellcat #3 last month, I complained that the book was selling poorly, and Fortress Keeper mentioned there were apparently concerns among readers about its incoherence. I've said previously I only understand half of what's going on, so I understand the feeling. For example, Patsy was told she needed the Bear with Antlers as part of her group, but she would have to apologize to it, and to do that she has to find it. She's told it will come if you 'lie by a grave'. Patsy sees a grave*. Undaunted, she marches up to the grave, pulls off one of her (dead) arms, stands on top of the rusted out SUV and beings spouting off various statements about herself. When she says 'Everybody loves me', someone replies 'That is a lie', and hey, it's the Bear with Antlers! It took someone else's discussion of the book for me to realize the spirit that talked to Patsy meant "lie" as in, "tell a falsehood", not "lie" as in, "lay down". On my initial readthrough, I figured Patsy had decided that if she said what she did the Bear with Antlers would be contrary and arrive to dispute the point. She had said she was going to 'do this her way', so I figured that meant she didn't feel like lying down next to a dead body, and so she'd try this instead. I was apparently wrong, but it worked well enough in my mind I could keep going.

I think some readers are more used to writers who lay everything out as they go along, and when confronted with a writer not playing it that way, we start poring over the book again and again, thinking we must have missed the voice balloon or expository caption that will make everything clear. In the process, I think people miss the forest for the trees.

Me? I just keep the basic plot in mind, and trust I'll figure out the rest later. The story is essentially "Unlikely hero gathers band of oddballs to rescue the princess". Like I said once, it's Legend of Zelda + Baron Munchausen. For the gamers among the audience, think of those RPGs where you play some character you wouldn't expect to save the world, and they go through the game meeting other characters, and convincing them to join the group. Which frequently requires you undertake some sort of task to convince them to join up, right? Well, Patsy had to fight the wolf, catch the snow lemming, apologize to the Bear with Antlers, and she seems to have reached a peace accord with the map, leading it be helpful. In video games, you usually have to fight them, or help them complete some task they promised to complete. Same difference.

If you want a more literary comparison (for the non-gamers in the audience), how about Robin Hood? In the version I remember reading, Robin starts out a solo act, but keeps coming across other characters he fights with at first, but eventually convinces to join him in his quest to deal with the Sheriff and Prince John. If you're a Stephen King fan, you may have read the Dark Tower series, then think of it like that. Roland had a quest he (or some greater force) had set him upon, and he gathered others to help him along the way, each having a role to play, and dealing with obstacles to their joining up along the way.

I'm reasonably confident Kathryn Immonen has a point with the particular wordings of things, and how inhabitants of that realm (and the realm itself) react to things Patsy says or does to believe I'll understand it when it's over. For the time being, I just remind myself she's trying to rescue the shamans' heir and stick with that. I think that while the story's in progress, that will be enough, and once it's completed, then I can sit back and put all the pieces together. Because it's almost a certainty we don't have all the pieces yet, so probably best not to get too bent out of shape about it.

* Hers, to be exact. Yes, that's part of the half I don't totally understand, though I have some theories. I'm waiting until the end of the story to try and make more sense of it.