Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

intros: say if bureaucrats and what kind

J.M. (Julia): born and raised in then-USSR, example of autocratic bureaucracy. immigrated over 30 years ago, USian bureaucracy in immigration. is opposite of bureaucrat, day job as academic scientist, pride self on being unruly

Laurence: R&D background, joined US Patent and Trademark Office as patent examiner last year, in feat of amazing timing

Victoria: day job, bureaucrat for 28 years at major research university. currently helping with grant applications, require great deal of finicky attention to detail. before that, a lot of university policies about purchasing and reimbursement

Shiv: first novel was cyberpunk bureaucracy (Domechild). bureaucracy experience in two separate countries. government of India in professional capacity, used to make ads for them; then immigration to US

Steve: career working with what people call bureaucracy, big government agencies. never really had to deal with Kafkaesque ever. really like the bureaucrats that has worked with, far-thinking and well-intentioned, hobbled by bad legislation and insufficient finances

Victoria: bureaucracy can be used for good or bad, don't really want to argue about its existence. organizing principle for any large human endeavor is basically bureaucracy. panel: have you read anything with fresh approaches, or suggest ways that bureaucracies can make good fiction

Laurence: bureaucracy implies stability in a way, even if malicious or oppressive, can hopefully find way to adapt to it.

Steve: bureaucracies have to handle issue of scale. organizations helping thousands of people, then bureaucratic structure starts to appear. Star Wars, "fear will keep the local stations in line," doesn't really work

Shiv: bureaucracy is model that is designed to only work at scale, which is unusual, can't scale down. useful to remember that was original meritocracy as envisioned, China created exams to select (and then ignored results for centuries). really cool moment in human history, did not previously have concept of best person for job gets job.

J.M.: bureaucracies are based on rules and order. range of perceptions about how fair rules are (also transparent). ideal cozy bureaucracy is heaven, also hell: rules are fixed, no arbitrariness. so many TV examples. Korean shows or Chinese, have a structure that's bureaucratic in essence, but at top is a deity: great turtle or ox that holds the world. innate sense of fairness comes from that non-human entity. reflects distrust of human, ideal of fairness. Nobody's Looking, Brazil: character figures out that little hamster in wheel powers the whole fair structure

Laurence: Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss are chaotic opposites

Victoria: comfort of predictability: in fiction, can make case for subverting that.

Shiv: challenge that predictability is one of core functions for bureaucracy. what about bureaucrats working within or against. Winston Smith in 1984 is one way

Steven: Miracle Workers: god decides to flush whole universe down toilet, two bureaucrats trying to save it

J.M.: absolutely, love it; god is not malevolent but absentee landlord, played by Steve Buscemi

Victoria: can be benevolent, non-benevolent, indifferent

Shiv: another reason challenging for story, bureaucrats are quintessential middle management.

Victoria: idea that bureaucrats go mad with power, even over really small stakes

Shiv: post-independence, India had bureaucratic system that was called License Raj, called that because was so fiendish like British still there. wanted car? go through government, takes years to be assigned one. takes years more to be assigned color ... even though there are only white cars

Laurence: bureaucrat has flexibility in interpreting the rules. once he has rejected application, can write examiner's note with advice, or suggest to attorney that have an interview so can explain conditions. some examiners like that, some don't. some green card interviewers like being kind, some get out of bed on wrong side. gives room to portray individual characters: what is their experience

J.M.: therein lies narrative tension, long for ideal bureaucracy that would be helpful and just, but only human. two problems: middle management is human, don't apply rules uniformly or at all; other side: cannot write the rules that are good enough. trying to cover all contingencies, becomes barriers

Shiv: private sector bureaucracy: try to file insurance claim. interesting, public bureaucracy designed to prevent worst-case scenario, private to prevent best-case

Steve: all worst experiences have been with private sector. (admits maybe sample is biased.)

Victoria: in private sector, people aren't rewarded for staying for long time in same job: leads to people doing things their way because institutional knowledge isn't there

V: fantasies of bureaucracy, affect how people think about government (treating government and bureaucracy as interchangeable for these purposes). how use them for positive effects?

Laurence: 20th century stories almost exclusively negative, lead to cynical and negative responses (which is not to say that not deserved). chicken and egg, Catch-22 or Kafka as responses to experiences maybe, but still cycle

V: showing bureaucrat going through daily lives and trying to do things well, goes along with seeing self in fiction. felt connection to people in Arkady Martine duology, also Murderbot experiencing different types of bureaucracy

J.M.: Star Trek itself, huge organization that works

Laurence: Iain Banks' Culture, see in interfacing with non-Culture

Shiv: Star Trek really good example, what matters is not that good, but least worse option available to you.

Steve: also Known Space, Niven, when successful, invisible. no narrative tension until fails. could do positive bureaucracy in untenable situation, e.g. natural disaster.

Shiv: how set baseline opinion of bureaucracy is during moments of non-crisis, which is difficult because stories are about overcoming obstacles. in a non-crisis, the obvious obstacle to overcome is bureaucracy itself, which is not message want to send

Victoria: trying to write post-conflict fiction, would be one way of doing it. Goblin Emperor, Hands of Emperor, consider both aspirational fantasies of bureaucracy: none of us have power of emperor, but what would I do with the power, especially since Maia (in Goblin) is so shy, downtrodden

Laurence: love Goblin Emperor, not sure best example since he is at top, many problems are because hasn't had chance to find feet. Witness for the Dead trilogy is maybe better example, very conventional church bureaucracy, protagonist working within that system; aspirational in that way too, because things do work out

Victoria: bureaucracy is background to and part of mystery plots in that trilogy

Shiv: Goblin Emperor: about to ruin, cover ears. at some point if don't draw line between politics and bureaucracy, going to have argue that Game of Thrones is bureaucracy novel. really about courtly politics

J.M.: Memory Called Empire also mostly court politics

Steve: respectfully disagree: Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings are failed systems because don't have bureaucracy, whole purpose of which to prevent what happened. "Sauron should never have gotten a building permit." medieval delegation in Europe is start of bureaucracy there, limits power of kings/emperors

Victoria: Hands of Emperor, another imperial novel but POV character is career bureaucrat. same issue of having imperial power, but mostly looking at what things this single bureaucrat puts into motion, because emperor gives instructions but bureaucrat must implement. we see that change takes time. has been working on what's effectively universal basic income, see played out in different people's lives. odd novel, massive, kind of circles back on self, but very much about civil service

audience: friend who writes legislation read it, was furious: person who writes legislation shouldn't also be implementing! can you have fantasies of bureaucracy where protagonist is not limited or collective in some way? is that necessary feature? or can we indulge in fantasy of purely good bureaucrat

Laurence: fantasy of bureaucracy, to my mind, should be much more egalitarian, focused on middle management

J.M.: the classical Western narrative with a lot of agency, is kind of at odds with this

(me, to myself: Saiyuki Gaiden features very corrupt heavenly bureaucracy and is about failing to prevail over it)

Shiv: lot of pushback about personal anonymity for specific bureaucrats. as species we really don't like not knowing who said so

Laurence: in US Patent and Trademark Office, my name is on all the rejections and allowances

Victoria: federal grant agencies: applicants know reviewers, can request not-that-one

audience: short story about alien bureaucracy gone wrong, title of which I didn't get; what would look like for alien bureaucracy to go right?

Laurence: aliens often stand for mysterious unknown powers, so bureaucracy can be monster

Shiv: weirdly, really functional bureaucracy is in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, appoint President for everyone to yell at while others do work; works at so many levels. also, Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged is one-person bureaucracy, developed immortality and is very mad about it, has list to personally insult every person in universe

Victoria: probably somewhere in C.J. Cherryh

audience: comment on Laundry novels, Charlie Stross?

Laurence: fun, mockery of system that deserves to be mocked

Victoria: Going Postal is a good example of good bureaucracy. obligated to mention Andor, examples of bad bureaucracy

Laurence: Too Like the Lightning, only decent people are UN functionaries

audience: Alastair Reynolds Prefect series, whole system based on voting

(me, to myself: Kagan, Hellspark; whole apparatus to determine if species is sapient)

Victoria: Rivers of London, regular cop trying to get magic police bureau and other bureaus to work together

Steve: Jasper Fforde

many jokes about timelines collapsing based on number of people on the panel, fact that it also ran on Thursday night

Andrea Martinez Corbin: introduce self and give one example

John: "The House that Made the Sixteen Loops of Time", Tamsyn Muir

Andrea Kriz: has collection (Learning To Hate Yourself As A Self-Defense Mechanism) with several time loop stories. other example: anime: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Alexander: Life After Life, Kate Atkinson

David: YouTube, One-Minute Time Machine

Carl: Edge of Tomorrow, watch Tom Cruise suffer as much as he deserves

Andrea Martinez Corbin: late episode of The Magicians, things they did that expanded characters, world, delighted completely.

Andrea Martinez Corbin cont'd: Readercon loves a taxonomy. broad types of time loops?

David: went to first time loop panel to make sure did loop properly. discussed stories were not time loops and ones that were, and they were wrong. said Heinlein, "'—All You Zombies—,'" was not, but it's same character living through same events three times. also Heinlein, "By His Bootstraps," same events at different stages of life.

Alexander: is the whole world repeating or just someone's life?

David: yes, distinction in physics: 3 different kinds of time. calendar, personal, "the third kind is weird" (the space-time interval). time-travel paradoxes go away if calendar time understood as only happening once, immutable

(the resident physicist, who has written literal books on these questions, is traveling at the moment, so I have not asked him to weigh in)

Andrea Kriz: taxonomy based on number of loops. 3 times? amateurs. Puella Magi Madoka Magica has hundreds or thousands, characters suffer psychological trauma from number of loops and nature of events. also: more comedic nature, Groundhog Day. more fan of time loops where characters are: we have to try killing. Re:Zero, isekai anime/light novel where reset if "failed"

Carl: don't tend to think of a lot of Western deployments of time loops as dramatic rather than comedic. like to think about it as what time loop does to character. a lot of Eastern media, trying to achieve mastery of impossible task. Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, are intended to be instructive: going to do this again until you stop being a jerk.

someone: until you address your trauma in Russian Doll

Carl: Eastern time loops are not interested in making characters less traumatized or better. frame-perfect 100% completion speedrunners of life, or give up and become catatonic

Alexander: On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, 7 book series, hot in literary circles. no visible goal of the time loop in first book. also, things don't repeat exactly, which is another taxonomic split

John: every Western SFF TV show at some point does Rashomon and a time loop, latter which tends to be literally "until you get it right"

Carl: would put that closer to frame-perfect speedrun. no-one could do this right the first time, but it's going to get done

John: determining/testing cause and effect, each iteration figuring faster and faster

(me, to myself: how many people in the loop is another taxonomic split)

Carl: tying into questing whether more popular now. globally, yes, very common structure in webtoons, one of fastest growing media forms. regressor (who dies and returns) as common as "farm boy fantasy". thinks less prevalent in West because fewer sci-fi trope of the week shows than ever been. if Star Trek: Strange New Worlds were 20 episodes we'd have a lot more

(me, to myself: yes, so they had to leave it to Ryan North to do in a Lower Decks graphic novel)

John: Doctor Who has done multiple

Andrea Kriz: video games, especially more text-heavy ones and in indie fields, since when reset the game, that's what you are doing anyway. Undertale, Deltarune, Slay the Princess

Andrea Martinez Corbin: very short indie game, Dark Queen of Mortholme. takes final boss battle and inverts it so that you're the boss. both you and hero who keeps coming in are aware of the loop, developing relationship with hero.

Andrea Martinez Corbin cont'd: what about written things? challenges about doing it in writing, why less common?

Andrea Kriz: own story "The Leviathan and the Fury" in Asimov's, about French WWII resistance. in short format, hard to show a lot of loops. see only 1 loop in story but lot of memories, flashbacks, comparisons

Carl: had time loops on manuscript wish list for a while. wasn't seeing any. what would a novel be like that's serious about doing that, how would it satisfy what I like about it? conclusion, though glad to be proven wrong: novels want to move forward. reading words off a page is a laborious process (obviously we've all dedicated entire life to it), don't want same paragraph over and over again. novels do not control rate of reading, or whether skip explanations, so easily accessible failure modes

David: opening sequences of Edge of Tomorrow: why don't like playing video games

Alexander: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton: murder mystery, talks to different person every time

Carl: that's what you do in video game

Alexander: Life After Life is full life time loop, like evolving to get past barriers that kill her; she doesn't know that it's loop

Andrea Martinez Corbin: time loop with only one person: psychological impacts?

Carl: in isekai family of stories, protagonist is suddenly given tremendous power: time loop literally makes you only person with agency. almost all genres have very dehumanizing effect on main character, stripping personhood from everyone else. pretty misanthropic genre at moment. thinking SSS Class Revival Hunter, main character first gets power to take power from anyone who kills him, but he still dies; then is murdered by someone who can go back in time one day if they are killed. main character realizes cannot let murderer know, therefore decides to kill self 4,000 times to get back before murderer awakens to power. ultimately dedicates self to achieving happiest possible result for every person, including villain. becomes more empathetic. (and runs into someone who is looping on different cadence, 10 days, and her death erases his memories too)

Alexander: we're a mixed marriage.

Alexander cont'd (I think): if you are looping, can see the variety of others' emotional reactions in way could not in regular life, know more about them than they about themselves.

Carl: touched on in Palm Springs: woman realizes he's done the math on how to pick her up.

Andrea Kriz: ethical conundrum would like to see get covered more, of optimizing. what happens in failed loops. Re:Zero implies that failed still exist

Carl: if you're in story with someone else looping, that's horror. there's no ethical way to be the one person the universe cares about

(me to myself: AHEM, STEPHEN KING (yes, I will always and forever be mad about that))

Alexander: Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence: (interprets as) about life you want to live

Andrea Martinez Corbin: The Good Place. using time loops for different purposes than anything been talking about

John: comedic effect, speed-run first season ever faster

Andrea Martinez Corbin: Russian Doll: Western example, funny but not comedic, trauma

Andrea Martinez Corbin: past five years, significantly, have had conversation how time feels weird and hasn't gone back to feeling normal. any relationship between personal distortion of time and interest in time loop stories, or specific types of, or is your interest broader

Alexander: to some extent think time loop stories derive from modern workplace

Carl: very much agree. time created to make factory work successfully

Alexander: thinks (effect of pandemic) would show up only slowly

John: speaking personally, idea of being able to get right, very appealing. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, musical about democracies in peril: all Presidents and First Ladies are effectively same person. first number is called "Rehearse!"

Carl: Hadestown

John: people gasped. not everyone knows the ending!

Andrea Martinez Corbin: people who do still get invested!

Andrea Kriz: think there's real hunger for time loop stories in my generation, even in my field, which is researcher in academia. isekai type work, power fulfillment genre. wondering if popularity of webtoons is from that

audience: time loop in opposition to forward motion structure of novel. finds that in model (as in, model story in Eastern media, I think) goes deeper (rather than forward, I think), so repetition gets to central truth. what can this structure tell us in Western publishing?

Carl: instructive that one of Western genre, Evelyn Hardcastle, is a mystery: each loop, drawing closer to truth that will free you

Alexander: through suffering gain knowledge, that's the hope anyway

me: surprised to find so many romance novels that are time loops. I haven't read any and doesn't seem like the panel has, so just wanted to flag that as a thing that exists

audience: Western time loops have exploded in written web serial fiction, one in particular, Mother of Learning very popular and influential. has lots of loopers working at cross purposes, trying to figure out why loop is happening and also optimize their outcomes. web serial fiction includes sites like Royal Road but also quests on forums, where readers vote on what writers should do next.

Carl: not surprised because webtoons are all adaptations of webnovels. very hard to turn into traditionally published fiction, but seeing some success. litrpg is 1:1 with isekai

audience: read time loop story that's horror, inspired by Groundhog Day with Andie MacDowell's character as protagonist. does anyone know title or venue?

panel does not, hopes that someone will find it or write it

audience: taxonomy: classify 50 First Dates: who is looping and why?

panel: has not seen, alas

audience: what are stakes for this? talk about it being dehumanizing. just the puzzle?

Alexander: motivation for a lot of the stories is to get out of the time loop

Carl: if don't figure out why, never get to experience anything else ever, infinitely

David: Spanish movie that takes slightly different way, each loop gets shorter, she realizes all going to end in another x hours and no idea what's going to happen after that. screen actually gets narrower. The Incredible Shrinking Wknd.

Charlie: characters with this approach?

Caitlin: apologizes for inherent spoilers, because involves taking plot inherently different direction. Joffrey in Game of Thrones is legendary one (presumably this is Ned being executed)

Robert: choosing example is a little hard, because from writer's side of fence, want to create surprise yet inevitability. ones that stay with me don't feel like someone just said, we gotta shake this up, more organic

Shariann: once was given advice, when get stuck, blow something up: really very effective. but then have to put in a little foreshadowing (or might find that it was actually there all along and hadn't noticed). thinks shouldn't be as much a surprise on reader's side because not doing job

Sophia: back to initial question: as plotting and as character choice, very differently. character who realistically does that, can result in interesting plots. fascinating ones are who build up to that explosion: Stephen Graham Jones has done several times very effectively. Indian Lake series, series building to one direction, character that reader knew was going to break, does, though surprise to other characters. still, character just blowing things up can be fun, terrifying, both

Caitlin: Jason Mendoza is hot sauce, not main course

Sophia: yes, love him, but would be very different genre if he were the main character

Robert: The Scar by Sergey Dyachenko and Marina Dyachenko. lovely book. seductively awful self-absorbed rake kills boyfriend of next seduction target, target looks at him with completely indifference, which is perfect reader Molotov cocktail because all expectations upended

Charlie: is writing Jason Mendozas unique?

Sophia: had a manuscript that was very long, lot of stuff happening, each new development through new character being introduced. also had ghost character who definitionally had no sense of consequences, pure impulse. every time my agent said, this character feels a bit extraneous, decided, just going to throw ghost at it, figure out how she can get to the same end result. made it feel much less chaotic and tighter, also much funnier. that said, this was revision not plotting. if have this kind of character initially, helps have some sense of where story going, what is about, or accept that going to be messy first draft.

Caitlin: what percentage of process is plotter versus pantser (writing by the seat of your pants), since seems like would be pretty relevant?

Shariann: every writer has a unique process and can change over time, plotter and pantser is continuum. am far on pantser end, have to write to find out where it's going. so that's where blowing up comes in useful: things started to literally jam up, did not know where in plot to move next. looked to character who it would make sense to blow things up: said to character, sure, go ahead. took whole story in different direction and worked wonderfully well.

Robert: plans a lot at start, then departs; metaphorically working toward mountain seen in distance, but no satellite maps, have to find way

Sophia: generally need to have sense for arcs and themes, but doesn't frequently know plot.

Caitlin: very similar. has hideously wasteful process, can't tell whether detailed outline is right until written substantial chunk of it. example: realized climax needed to be at 1/3 point of book

Robert: Sophia re: Molotov cocktail as character versus approach to plotting, both have equally caught me by surprise as a writer

Caitlin: suddenly struck by metaphor that Molotov cocktail is literally fuel.

someone: use pitch to make stick to tanks

Caitlin: yes otherwise could just brush them away (as author)

Charlie: initially thought this was a trickster panel. can you have a stolid character who throws

Sophia: character who is very stolid isn't going to be throwing Molotov cocktail, but from plot POV can throw a lot of stuff at them

(me, to myself: Jason isn't stolid but he is very predictable, in that he always wants to throw Molotov cocktails!)

someone: character who starts showing crack in their stolidity

Sophia: love that

Caitlin: believe that can have character who's very stolid/solid and knows their mind, wants, limits: see them make actual decision to explode because intolerable line crossed. don't need to be inherently chaotic or unstable. throwing part of who they are

general agreement

Caitlin cont'd: setting up situation with unattainable goal, do reasonable things in the moment to reach, results in cascading consequences. example: Iron Widow: joins military to avenge sister, which accomplishes pretty early, but that shifts goals. at 2/3 mark, pushed to decide between survival and massively reshaping society, not goal but things escalated so fast. changes what problem of book is and what series is about.

Charlie: moving goalposts one entire field at time

Caitlin: and on reader too

Robert: as much as in love with surprise (don't think would be able to finish anything if not wondering what going to happen in next chapter [I think that this was, finish writing, rather than reading, but I'm not sure]), satisfying rug-pull on reader expectations needs balancing own indulgence with a lot of planning. just a set of encounters is not satisfying

Caitlin: Jason Mendoza not very intelligent, but definitely changes substantially over course of series. perpetual chaos muppet will eventually become tiring to reader

Sophia: keep in mind that stories are always about something. Jason is fundamentally important to theme of show, is kind caring person who does a lot of dumb and destructive things. he breaks not just plot but ideas of what goodness means. chaos so meaningful in broader sweep of story

Caitlin: writers are not being chaotic

Sophia: single most "and then THINGS HAPPEN" is Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, which is also most intentional book ever read. need to build trust and rapport with reader. easy way to do that is tropes, much harder to say, don't know where going with this but trust me.

audience: Sophia mentioned teaching Molotov cocktail method, is that more than Chandler's "and then someone burst in shooting"

Sophia: working with burnout or writer's block people, one of goals is to make writing feel as fun and low-stakes as possible, especially since lots are writing about trauma. method: first know driving force of scene. what is the weirdest, funniest, most frustrating, etc. etc.—pick superlative, actually has a checklist—way could possibly achieve. then do that. not necessarily what final draft will be, but goal is enjoying process. which is something that Jason really has!

audience: example of Molotov cocktail compounding is Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. main character treated like walking time bomb for 12 books, 13th goes off in way he didn't expect, readers either. permanently changed dialogue between readers, author. do you consider that?

(me to myself: this is tangential but I will always remember "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault." as a first book line (to Blood Rites))

Robert: any time telling story, it's about raising of expectations and then what do with them. can't pretend that haven't been raised. to subvert, have to have planted seeds that really wanted other thing all along

Shariann: relationship between author, reader, character, and the arc of character. reader buy-in mostly through identification with character. if arc is compelling, well, people are changing all the time, which is what makes story interesting. psychologist once said that change in belief happens quickly but was building all along.

Caitlin: as author, have duty to not pretend to naive about impact on reader.

In my introduction, I described this Tumblr poll which was then at the top of my Bluesky account.

someone's introduction talked about the story as when unshakeable faith is required and when it can't be maintained.

We started by Tom asking Greer whether Orpheus could ever not look back.

Greer: tells story of Sir Orfeo, upshot of which is that Orfeo has no conditions placed on his recovery of his wife, Heurodis, and gets everything back. Feels like Shakespeare in Winter's Tale, tired of tragedy

(this telling involved Heurodis being replaced by a gray stone, and suddenly I realized that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell probably is related to this or some related myth in some way)

Tom: is this the same story?

Sophia: fundamentally not. the condition is key, it's like Lot's wife

Constance: (my notes here say, "character or moral? Orpheus' lack [of faith, I think] = character. story not the myth." this is much less illuminating than I would like at this point and this panel was only two days ago, on Saturday morning! apologies)

Tom: find core of story incredibly frustrating, it's an unavoidable trap and I hate it. it's not cathartic, why can't I shake sense into Orpheus

Tom: asks Sophia about Hadestown.

Sophia: gives premise, including that about miners. notes that audience gasps every. time. he turns around. about cycles, perseverance in activism.

Tom: asks about adding the miners to the story.

me: I did not listen to Hadestown all the way through before I went to see it. two things really surprised me: first, that Eurydice chose to go to Hadestown because she and Orpheus were starving and he was too wrapped up in composing to help. Second, when Orpheus discovers this, he despairs and asks "If It's True" ... and the workers, who to this point had been the chorus, respond and ask, why can't we stand with him? And then it becomes about Orpheus, Eurydice, and the workers: Eurydice is going to follow Orpheus, and they are going to follow Eurydice.

Sophia: the gods are having very normal marital problems, but because of the power they have, it's destroying the world, and the workers are caught in it. so apt.

Greer: interesting that hell is pervading the upper world here, parallel to Oberon and Titania in Midsummer Night's Dream

Tom: asks Constance about Kaos on Netflix

Constance: Riddy (Eurydice) is not as into Orpheus as he is into her. she goes to Underworld and falls in love with someone else, finding herself in death. crux of Orpheus & Eurydice is that the stakes are very unbalanced: him, possession and loss; her, life and death. Does Eurydice really want to leave or is she "song-roofied"? in Kaos do come to terms with differing desires.

(me, sotto voce to Tom: now would be a great time to ask me about Harrow the Ninth!)

Tom: asks me about Harrow the Ninth =>

me cont'd: but to me, the three interesting things about Orpheus and Eurydice stories are: why does Eurydice die? why can't Orpheus look back? and why does he fail? and Hadestown and Harrow both give answers to the first and second, and Hadestown also to the third (he's removed from community as well as from Eurydice).

Constance: like Buffy, was also happy being dead. Orpheus always has to look back, but maybe Eurydice isn't always following.

Tom: L’Esprit de L’Escalier, by Catherynne M. Valente; I Never Liked You Anyway, by Jordan Kurella

Greer: The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie

Sophia: where you have consistent weather patterns, water, less war: stories about gods are primarily benevolent tricksters. inverse: stories about gods are, why is the world like this. inexplicablity is the point.

audience: is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead an Orpheus and Eurydice story? also has cycles, inevitability, author's choice of hell (this was clearly a reference to something from early on that I failed to note down, sorry)

Sophia: feels much more Hadestown than Orpheus and Eurydice, the point of Orpheus and Eurydice is that it's a one-time thing. but Shakespeare may be like myth in terms of the audience's sense of knowledge and thus sense of repetition.

Greer: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have no choice from the beginning.

audience: re: choice of hell, do Orpheus and Eurydice retellings land differently when they're from a Christian-pervasive society where it's Hell, rather than an Underworld that everyone goes to?

Constance: Moulin Rouge, the "underworld" is the seedy music scene, but it's all about perspective, if you're not dying from consumption it's much less bad (possibly even welcoming?). also Kaos is much more Greek and has a whole society in the Underworld

Sophia: "other" doesn't have to be "under" in the place you go, refers to Greer's mention of Faerie in Sir Orfeo. also Christianity also gets into ideas of cleanliness re: the "other" place, and that almost fits better with the woods. See also the rescue of Sita

Constance: Farscape, Aeryn Sun, can't go back because been exposed to other worlds/peoples

Greer: Scandinavian versions where Eurydice goes under the sea based on who stole her

audience: Severance, Underworld self has no awareness of other

audience: always thought the story was about the denial of death, not the loss of faith: the understanding that it's never going to work. therefore always liked versions that took on that question, that are about grief and not getting life back after a death. recommendations?

me: Harrow

Sophia: this is awful and I apologize, but: my work-in-progress

Greer: interested in stories that complete the myth and have Orpheus torn to pieces (I know this happens in the Sandman)