January Meme: Concerning Fannishness in Rivers of London

[selenak]

I promised falena a Rivers of London meta, but I wanted to read Lies Sleeping, the latest novel, first, and I didn’t have the chance until now. Btw: the novel very much has a series or season finale feeling, wrapping up several storylines – prominently the Faceless Man and why Lesley did what she did -, and as such is pretty action-packed. It also provides background on one of the earliest villains of the saga, uses London architecture as well as ever and Peter Grant remains one of the most likeable suburban fantasy protagonists around. In conclusion: I liked it very much.

However, the reveal of the Faceless Man’s masterplan also got me thinking about something that nipped at me in the previous novel, The Hanging Tree, where we find out the Faceless Man’s identity as well. To wit: one of the several qualities which make Peter so likeable is that he’s an unabashed geek and fanboy, throwing out the references quick and fast. As andraste recently pointed out re: Murderbot novels, this seems to become an increasing thing in fantays and sci fi – the fellow fan protagonist. Otoh, it’s worth pointing out that the Faceless Man is as big a fan, especially heavy with the Tolkien references, and his ultimate master plan is very much a fanboy thing (the most fanboy thing in an ongoing popular series since the Trio were the main antagonists in Buffy‘s sixth season), and so I wonder whether Aaronovich, while continuing the fannish love declarations via Peter, also pulls off a critique of (part of) fandom, some trope setters and indeed current day Britain alike.



To wit: What Martin Chorley (aka the Faceless Man) wants to do, and what caused Lesley to go darkside beyond wanting her face back, is a two-fold plan: kill Mr. Punch, the first novel’s main villain who possessed her, nearly killed her and ruined her face, and using the mystical energy released by said death (which, since Punch counts as a 2000 years old deity, is a lot) to engineer a reality in which not Arthur but Merlin comes back. That, as Peter points out, there likely never was an Arthur or a Merlin is besides the point for Chorley since the goal is to create a new reality in which they could exist and have done.

Now, Aaronovich, who used Arthurian lore for his most famous Seventh Doctor era story, is presumably as fond of those tales as he’s of Tolkien, but it’s not too much of a speculation on my part to assume he’s also keenly aware of the deeply conservative, retro nature of the tropes they trigger – achieving the ideal of a world/Britain that never was by the refusal to acknowledge reality and risking reality to go haywire in the pursuit o fit (since no one really knows what would happen if Punch is killed but most characters seem convinced there wouldn’t be much of London left, for starters) has some obvious contemporary parallels. Otoh, it’s hard to say Lesley is entirely wrong when she tells Peter „This world is shit“. (Mind you, Lies Sleeping takes place several years pre Brexit and Trump; early on, we get a reference to the First Lady visiting a London school in a mainly Muslim area and before I could do „Melania does what?“ Peter continues, re: who gets to be on the police detail fort hat, „and that’s why Guleed has a selfie with Michelle Obama and I don’t“. Upon which yours truly goes „right, much less time passes within the novels than it did in rl between book publications“.)

Rivers of London is a series justly praised for its diversity of characters both in terms of ethnicity and religion, but while it uses its history – the backstory of Mr. Punch in the last volume goes back to Roman Britain and Boudicca’s rebellion and sacking of Londinium, for example -, one thing it pointedly avoids doing is making its central protagonist any type of Chosen One or Rightful Heir supposed to fulfill a prophecy or several. Chorley, who is enough of a Tolkien geek to be fluent in Quenya and Sindarin, sign his bombs with dwarfish runes, provide his captive with The Silmarillion to read and loves (his idea of) the Middle Ages, otoh, definitely is into that entire storyline. And his idea of how a reality-shifted Britain should be like conforms to it. Now, Chorley is the undeniable villain of the novel, but imo it’s clever and honest of Aaronvich to make Lesley, who is a character both the narrative and our narrator still have sympathy for, fall for the idea as well. Because yes, reality can be truly awful, and in need of change. It’s just that when the change isn’t achieved via honesty, collaboration and trying to work with what exists but by deception, promises of something that never existed and looking strictly back, not forward, that the fannishness for it becomes poisonous.

The other days

Comments

[chelseagirl]

Thanks for this. I enjoyed this series, but dropped off a book or two ago, and am not sure if I'll come back in or not, as my reading focus has shifted away from fantasy to a large extent. But I felt really bad about Lesley and this helps.

[selenak]

Lesley wanting Punch dead and a different reality are indeed understandable motives, and she remains on the morally ambigous side, and has some excellent scenes with Peter, not just the cameos she had in the other books since her betrayal.

[kore]

I liked this book a lot better than the previous couple of books, but if you're a Lesley fan, it might not be for you. //trying not to be spoilery

[chelseagirl]

I did like Lesley, but if the author has taken her in another direction, I have to be willing to roll with that.

But honestly, since I've been delving back into mysteries, and to a lesser extent romances, partly for connections to my own writing, and keeping up with science fiction because I teach it sometimes (great for considering moral issues about technology with my engineering students), I've kind of let fantasy go. I do want to read it but I partly also am looking at my must-read stack and sighing.

[kore]

My TBR stack is basically half the bookshelves in my apartment. /o\

Peter treats Lesley sympathetically -- and not just her, there's a long section with another character I really liked -- but yeah, she's definitely a long way down a different path, and she's pretty dangerous at this point.

[jesuswasbatman]

Another similar example is Paul Cornell's original Wisdom miniseries for Marvel, in which the villain is a steampunk enthusiast (and also a misogynistic Jack the Ripper walking tour guide prone to moaning about feminists and PC censorship of culture) who ends up summoning an invasion of alternate-reality Wellsian Martians to fulfil his retro-SF dreams.

There's quite a bit of discussion in Britain at the moment about the role played by romanticised pop-culture ideas of Britain during WWII in "hard Brexit as stiffener for a decadent and self-indulgent culture" enthusiasm.

[selenak]

Yes, I noticed. I also noticed that "we survived the Blitz" arguments seem to come exclusively from people who didn't survive the Blitz, due to not having been born yet. The whole discourse really strengthens my suspicion that there was mad projecting going on in the Chequers Meeting.

[jesuswasbatman]

After all the recent arguments over whether sitcoms based on parody right-wing characters actually normalise and encourage such views, it would be a whole new twist if the most socially-negative sitcom of all time ended up being Dad's Army. (If you aren't aware of it, beloved 1968-77 British sitcom about lovably incompetent members of Britain's civilian "last resort" militia the Home Guard, think the Volkssturm in Germany, having gentle misadventures in a romanticised Home Front, now an iconic work among a certain type of British patriot.)

[kore]

"we survived the Blitz" arguments seem to come exclusively from people who didn't survive the Blitz, due to not having been born yet

//lolSOB

[wychwood]

he’s also keenly aware of the deeply conservative, retro nature of the tropes they trigger – achieving the ideal of a world/Britain that never was by the refusal to acknowledge reality and risking reality to go haywire in the pursuit of it

Oh, absolutely - I think it's overt in the text, tbh, given Peter's response to the whole idea and his awareness of what Chorley's imagined Britain would mean for him personally.

I really like the way Aaronovitch is using fannishness of different kinds in this series - there's lots of different kinds (also, like Peter's dad and the jazz fans who remember him) and it's not Good or Bad just another characteristic which can be used by all sides. I love fannish protagonists as much as the next fan, but I appreciate a version which is aware of the negatives of fannishness as well (without falling into Sorkinism, obviously!).

[selenak]

it's not Good or Bad just another characteristic which can be used by all sides.

Yes, that's it exactly. And good Lord, yes, the jazz fans. Mind you, I thought the Jazz Vampires were a bit too much as far as Fantasy takes on fannishness are concerned. :)

[wychwood]

Haha, yes, I was thinking of the human fans (his dad's new band, etc) rather than the vampire-y ones.

[oracne]

Thanks for this! I must ponder.

[falena]

I absolutely don't mind having to wait when I got awesome, juicy LS meta! I'm a wee bit in love with your brain. ;) I just can't analyse things I'm fannish about with my critical faculties, if I am fannish about something I just go "ooh, shiny", this is why I like reading your reviews/meta so much. You always give me food for thought. In this case, your take on how BA incorporates fannish ess in his characters making sure it's not all black or white. Thanks!

Would you mind if I dropped a link to this post in the_folly?

[selenak]

Not at all, and thank you for waiting!

[kore]

I like this a lot. There were things I didn't like in the book (mostly having to do with Beverly) and it did have the feeling of wrapping up arcs and storylines, but I liked it a lot better than the last couple of entries in the series. I did like the book better after rereading it, and letting things sink in.

[sienamystic]

Thanks for this, going to think about it.

[contrary_cal]

I'm ambivalent about whether I actually like this series, but I have just read Lies Sleeping and I definitely think Aaronovitch is doing interesting things with the idea of fannishness and where it can lead you (a big thing: Peter shares his fannishness, and gets along with other people's fannish traits, whereas Chorley imposes his). But a thing that stuck out at me about Lesley is that actually, she doesn't seem to have any fannishness. She never did. And she didn't gain it from associating with Chorley. She wanted Punch dead, entirely understandably (being taken over, mind-raped, partially destroyed and left in huge amounts of pain will do that to you), but I never got the sense that she gave the remotest fuck about the idea of bringing Merlin back/creating a world with Merlin in it. She doesn't have the imagination needed to create, and she didn't want to; she might have paid lip-service to the idea in company with Chorley, but at base she just wanted to destroy (Punch, the world) out of anger and a need for revenge. She killed Chorley without blinking when she realised he hadn't - not created a Merlin-compatible world - but killed Punch.

To me that's what makes her even more dangerous than Chorley. She won't try to replace the world with something she thinks is better because she can't imagine anything better. She'll just destroy it outright in an attempt to assuage her own hurts along with it. And now she doesn't have anyone she can position herself as 'the good bad guy' relative to, to moderate her choices...

Oddly enough, Beverley doesn't have much that sticks in my mind as fannishness either, but then she has other avenues for creation. Even Nightingale has his rugby, and Molly her Jamie Oliver cookery, but Lesley and Beverley don't map to the concept of fannishness in my mind.

[selenak]

Re: Lesley, I agree that for her, it's all about (killing) Punch, and the Merlinesque Britain is more an excuse that comes with it. Otoh, I don't see her as completely nihilistic, in "just burn the world" mode yet. She did go out of her way to keep Peter alive. Now don't get me wrong, that doesn't make her good, but as long as she still has the capacity to care for a few people in the world, I don't see her ready to destroy it just to take out Punch and end her own pain. She might get there! But is not there yet.

[beatrice_otter]

With Lesley, it's all about power and order: who has it, who should, and who shouldn't. There should be power enforcing order, and she should be on the side of that power. In the first few books, listen to her comments (relayed via Peter) about what good policing is and what sorts of things police should be able to do and why. (The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the one about how people with heart conditions shouldn't get in the way of a cop with a taser, and if they did something the cop didn't like and got tasered and died, it was their own fault.) Peter takes it as a bit cynical top level on an otherwise good person by viewing her statements through his own irony. But if you take her statements as relayed by Peter absolutely seriously, you get quite a different view.

[selenak]

P.S. Re: lack of fannishness in Lesley and Beverly - true, though with Beverly, I find it tricky to get a hold on her personality anyway. She's very much a in the here and now river, that one. :)

[lilacsigil]

I was really satisfied with the Lesley parts of this book. She didn't think what Chorley was planning was particularly good or bad, and it would kill Punch. But she didn't really give a shit about his plan being successful (apart from the Punch part) either, so when he failed the one task she needed him for, that was that. And I appreciated that Chorley tried to blame Peter for his failure to kill Punch, but Lesley never expected that Peter would kill Punch (or indeed anyone) so that was irrelevant to her. I could see a clear line between early Lesley and this Lesley, and how she could still see herself as a good (if hardened) person.

[selenak]

Same here. Now I could see her go completely darkside and prioritize killing Punch over everything else, but imo, she's not there yet.

[lilacsigil]

She's definitely not to that point, and her acceptance, however mocking, that Peter is not going to cross certain lines, kept her very human to me. She still has the same values as she always did, just with some very different knowledge and under much greater stress. I also liked that she wouldn't let Chorley deliberately target Peter or other police, but if they walked into trouble, well, she wasn't going to great effort to get them out of it.

[falena]

I totally agree. Lesley's motives and actions make a lot of sense. Not that I was expecting BA not have it make sense, you know, but I hadn't been able to get a good handle on what was motivating her to be with Chorley (other than getting her face back) and LS really delivered in this respect.

[lilacsigil]

Yes, exactly! I was hoping it wasn't just trying to get her face back (and I say "just" but it's a massive, horrible, life-changing injury) or some kind of magical healing and apprenticeship to gain power. Her revenge on Punch and also genuinely (with good reason) believing that destroying him is a good thing for everyone, that makes perfect sense with the Lesley we saw at the start. The part where she reminded Peter of the baby they saw murdered by his Punch-possessed father - and her implication that Peter, as always, is too soft on evil - was absolutely perfect.

[juniperphoenix]

These are great observations. Thanks for sharing.

(Here via the_folly)

[selenak]

You're very welcome, and well met again! :)

[sixthlight]

For me the difference between Chorley and Peter is that Chorley does feel fannish, whereas Peter feels more like someone who enjoys nerd-adjacent pop culture. (Lesley, on the third hand, engages only grudgingly with even mainstream nerdery.) But I do enjoy the critique of classic fantasy via Chorley as much as I wince because I, too, have a much-loved copy of the Dark is Rising series on my bookshelf.

[rebcake]

Thanks for this. I listened to the book last week, and I was a bit mystified at what Chorley's plot actually was. It seemed kind of ridiculous, but now I think that it lacked punch (you should excuse the expression) because it was diluted. The two principle plotters had different goals, but one shared means to that goal. You've cleared it right up for me.

Also, I was probably still feeling like the big victory was freeing Foxglove and not ready to concentrate on the boss fight.

Excellent points, all around.

[msilverstar]

On the fannish qualities of the books: I think there's a lot of fanfic aesthetic there, even though it's a supernatural police procedural series with a first person narrator. Which I assumed made it impossible to feel like fanfic but somehow it does.