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.

[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.

[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!).

[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?

[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.

[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.

[juniperphoenix]

These are great observations. Thanks for sharing.

(Here via the_folly)

[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.