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"... hating them in general and loving them in particular."
So here's the post pulling together my Thoughts On Dragaerans from my emails with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija while reading the Taltos books. Spoilers up through the latest, Vallista. (In fact, spoilers mainly for that one.)
Title of this post, of course, is Vlad when he says goodbye to his friends at the end of Phoenix: "I'll probably find some place with people around. Probably Dragaerans, so I can go back to hating them in general and loving them in particular." (This is still probably my favorite quote from any of the books.)
Vallista was a fascinating book for all the things we learned about Dragaerans. Most of this has been generally implied and occasionally stated (we've known since Jhereg that the Dragaerans and Easterners were experimented on, and I think we found out in Issola or thereabouts about the "stagnant society" thing) but I think this is the first time it's been clearly laid out in this much detail).
From Vlad's conversation with Verra:
DRAGAERANS CAN'T INVENT THINGS. It's built in. They are essentially stuck in a trap where they spend all their intellectual energy and the focus of their long lives on an obsession with whatever their House is obsessed with: Dragons expend their energy on endless, pointless war games; Iorich obsess on the minutiae of the law, Dzur go looking for things to fight with, etc.
Rachel and I speculated on what, exactly, it was that caused Verra's epiphany in Vallista about "the end of an era ... it ended more than two hundred years ago. I just wasn't sure until today." It took awhile for us to see it, but -- it's the magic house. The Vallista invented something new, something that didn't exist before; they figured out the technological innovation of looping time.
Dragaerans aren't supposed to be able to innovate. But these Vallista did -- they invented something new. Which means (most likely) that Adron's Disaster broke whatever was stopping them from being able to invent and create. There was a magic barrier in place, and now it's not holding them back anymore.
They must be able to innovate a little bit, they have to, because their writing system has changed over time (there's a mention in one of the books that Vlad has trouble reading older Dragaeran books because the writing system is different). And they are capable of creating music and poetry and literature. They are still people and individuals with personalities and desires.
But let's go back to this quote from Taltos:
It's filtered through his general dislike of Dragaerans at that point, which makes it seem like "oh, just another thing Vlad doesn't like about Dragaerans" as opposed to being significant.
But think about all the many things Vlad says Dragaerans don't do, throughout the series. They're not good at cooking, not that they're physically bad at it, but they just don't have very many recipes; Eastern food is much more diverse. They only have one word for "wine". In fact, they only have one word for a whole lot of things. Remember that bit a few books back where Vlad says that the Dragaeran word for "hawk" refers to all kinds of raptors where Easterners have different words for all of them?
At the time, I found that a cool worldbuilding detail, assuming it just meant that their language goes more for top-level categories than having a bunch of words for different things (kind of like some languages have fewer color words than English, so blue and green are both covered under one color word, for example).
But I think that's not what it means, I think all of that is tied together with the Dragaerans, in general, just not being especially interested in, or curious about, anything outside their House's area of expertise. They only have one word for "wine" and one word for "bird of prey" and like 5 recipes they know how to make, because THEY JUST DON'T CARE. Of course they're still people, they're individuals, they have tastes and hobbies and distinct personalities and so forth, but they also are driven by whatever their House is driven by, and don't have much time and interest for anything else. Even the Jhereg, the "outsider" house that collects the misfits, has an overall culture that is obsessed with making money and controlling crime in the Empire, thus neatly removing them from the likelihood of innovating or messing with the established order.
Which is also making me think about the first book in the series and how thematically important it is that:
a) The book starts after Vlad's friend group has already been drawn together, so the introduction we get to their world and these characters is a bunch of people from different Houses and areas of society being friends and fighting to protect each other, and
b) The entire plot of the first book is driven by the nature of Castle Black, that it's a haven for people of any House where they can interact and talk and be around each other - which is something that just doesn't really exist anywhere else in their world. Even the palace is segregated by House.
They mix together in cities, by necessity, but even there we're told they mostly keep to themselves. Vlad is surprised in Iorich, I think it was, to encounter an inn in which Dragaerans from different Houses are freely mingling. Looking back on it now, it's thematically fascinating that the plot of the entire first book is driven by trying to preserve Castle Black as a place specifically designed for different Houses (and even Dragaerans and Easterners) to mingle, and get to know each other, and share ideas. The entire sharing-of-ideas thing is something that Sethra and Morrolan and Aliera (and Vlad) are all really into - their friendship consists in large part of hanging out together and debating/arguing about things. (Often in the library, which is another thing Vlad makes a point of telling us in several books that Morrolan is really into - collecting books, and just generally gathering knowledge from everywhere and accumulating it at Castle Black.)
All of which is such standard fantasy fodder that, like the background worldbuilding of an Empire that's lasted for tens of thousands of years, you wouldn't really think anything about it. The way that they hang out and talk is the way that most people reading the books probably are with their friends too. But Dragaerans aren't. Especially not Dragaerans of the Dragon and Dzur houses, which are explicitly not about that, they're all about fighting, not learning things. Or at least they're supposed to be. But Morrolan and Sethra, in particular, are not like that.
Rachel also points out that Dragaerans ALWAYS wear their house colors. Like the entire thing with the Empire having a 10,000+ year history with nothing ever changing, this kind of color-coding is also pretty typical in fantasy and does not seem like a big deal, until you find out about this thing where Dragaerans are hard-coded to do certain things and not others, and then suddenly it becomes significant.
When we first meet Vlad, possibly one reason why he hates Dragaerans so much is not just because of being fundamentally an outsider (though that's a big part of it) but also because he's spent his entire life bouncing off this brick wall of incuriosity and resistance to change that is more fundamentally alien to him than anything else about them.
Which is probably why, when he does start making friends with Dragaerans, it's with the misfits and weirdos and outsiders, the curious and the different -- Sethra and Morrolan, Aliera and Kragar.
... It also occurs to me that even if the Easterners weren't messed with in quite the same way as Dragaerans, the fact that the Dragaerans are constantly attacking them (in a way that is basically built into Dragaeran DNA) is probably also dragging them down and preventing them from having achieved, say, spaceflight and other forms of high tech by now.
It's just such absolutely wonderful worldbuilding, a really brilliant subversion of a bunch of standard fantasy-world tropes that are turned on their ear and put through a science fiction blender.
ETA:rachelmanija has additional thoughts building off my post; you can read them here. (Also very spoilery.)
rachelmanija while reading the Taltos books. Spoilers up through the latest, Vallista. (In fact, spoilers mainly for that one.)Title of this post, of course, is Vlad when he says goodbye to his friends at the end of Phoenix: "I'll probably find some place with people around. Probably Dragaerans, so I can go back to hating them in general and loving them in particular." (This is still probably my favorite quote from any of the books.)
Vallista was a fascinating book for all the things we learned about Dragaerans. Most of this has been generally implied and occasionally stated (we've known since Jhereg that the Dragaerans and Easterners were experimented on, and I think we found out in Issola or thereabouts about the "stagnant society" thing) but I think this is the first time it's been clearly laid out in this much detail).
From Vlad's conversation with Verra:
"It was the result of their whole effort. No, not effort. Experiment."
"Experiment?"
"They live a long time, Vlad. Long by Sethra's standards, long by mine. And they're observers, and they are absolutely heartless, at least where other species are concerned. This world is an experiment to see if a society can be made to stagnate."
"I am lost."
"Societies develop and change, Vlad. There are inventions, and inventions have repercussions throughout society; associations among people grow and become different."
"If you say so."
DRAGAERANS CAN'T INVENT THINGS. It's built in. They are essentially stuck in a trap where they spend all their intellectual energy and the focus of their long lives on an obsession with whatever their House is obsessed with: Dragons expend their energy on endless, pointless war games; Iorich obsess on the minutiae of the law, Dzur go looking for things to fight with, etc.
Rachel and I speculated on what, exactly, it was that caused Verra's epiphany in Vallista about "the end of an era ... it ended more than two hundred years ago. I just wasn't sure until today." It took awhile for us to see it, but -- it's the magic house. The Vallista invented something new, something that didn't exist before; they figured out the technological innovation of looping time.
Dragaerans aren't supposed to be able to innovate. But these Vallista did -- they invented something new. Which means (most likely) that Adron's Disaster broke whatever was stopping them from being able to invent and create. There was a magic barrier in place, and now it's not holding them back anymore.
They must be able to innovate a little bit, they have to, because their writing system has changed over time (there's a mention in one of the books that Vlad has trouble reading older Dragaeran books because the writing system is different). And they are capable of creating music and poetry and literature. They are still people and individuals with personalities and desires.
But let's go back to this quote from Taltos:
One thing that shed a great deal of light on how Dragaerans think was when I realized that they had no term for brandy, even though they had the drink. They called it wine, and, I guess, just had to know the bottler to decide how strong it was and what it tasted like. To me, brandy and wine aren't even close in taste, and maybe they aren't to Dragaerans, either. The thing is, Dragaerans don't care if they taste different, or that the process of making one has almost nothing to do with the process of making the other; the point is, they are alcoholic drinks made from fruit, so they must be the same thing. Interesting, no?
It's filtered through his general dislike of Dragaerans at that point, which makes it seem like "oh, just another thing Vlad doesn't like about Dragaerans" as opposed to being significant.
But think about all the many things Vlad says Dragaerans don't do, throughout the series. They're not good at cooking, not that they're physically bad at it, but they just don't have very many recipes; Eastern food is much more diverse. They only have one word for "wine". In fact, they only have one word for a whole lot of things. Remember that bit a few books back where Vlad says that the Dragaeran word for "hawk" refers to all kinds of raptors where Easterners have different words for all of them?
At the time, I found that a cool worldbuilding detail, assuming it just meant that their language goes more for top-level categories than having a bunch of words for different things (kind of like some languages have fewer color words than English, so blue and green are both covered under one color word, for example).
But I think that's not what it means, I think all of that is tied together with the Dragaerans, in general, just not being especially interested in, or curious about, anything outside their House's area of expertise. They only have one word for "wine" and one word for "bird of prey" and like 5 recipes they know how to make, because THEY JUST DON'T CARE. Of course they're still people, they're individuals, they have tastes and hobbies and distinct personalities and so forth, but they also are driven by whatever their House is driven by, and don't have much time and interest for anything else. Even the Jhereg, the "outsider" house that collects the misfits, has an overall culture that is obsessed with making money and controlling crime in the Empire, thus neatly removing them from the likelihood of innovating or messing with the established order.
Which is also making me think about the first book in the series and how thematically important it is that:
a) The book starts after Vlad's friend group has already been drawn together, so the introduction we get to their world and these characters is a bunch of people from different Houses and areas of society being friends and fighting to protect each other, and
b) The entire plot of the first book is driven by the nature of Castle Black, that it's a haven for people of any House where they can interact and talk and be around each other - which is something that just doesn't really exist anywhere else in their world. Even the palace is segregated by House.
They mix together in cities, by necessity, but even there we're told they mostly keep to themselves. Vlad is surprised in Iorich, I think it was, to encounter an inn in which Dragaerans from different Houses are freely mingling. Looking back on it now, it's thematically fascinating that the plot of the entire first book is driven by trying to preserve Castle Black as a place specifically designed for different Houses (and even Dragaerans and Easterners) to mingle, and get to know each other, and share ideas. The entire sharing-of-ideas thing is something that Sethra and Morrolan and Aliera (and Vlad) are all really into - their friendship consists in large part of hanging out together and debating/arguing about things. (Often in the library, which is another thing Vlad makes a point of telling us in several books that Morrolan is really into - collecting books, and just generally gathering knowledge from everywhere and accumulating it at Castle Black.)
All of which is such standard fantasy fodder that, like the background worldbuilding of an Empire that's lasted for tens of thousands of years, you wouldn't really think anything about it. The way that they hang out and talk is the way that most people reading the books probably are with their friends too. But Dragaerans aren't. Especially not Dragaerans of the Dragon and Dzur houses, which are explicitly not about that, they're all about fighting, not learning things. Or at least they're supposed to be. But Morrolan and Sethra, in particular, are not like that.
Rachel also points out that Dragaerans ALWAYS wear their house colors. Like the entire thing with the Empire having a 10,000+ year history with nothing ever changing, this kind of color-coding is also pretty typical in fantasy and does not seem like a big deal, until you find out about this thing where Dragaerans are hard-coded to do certain things and not others, and then suddenly it becomes significant.
When we first meet Vlad, possibly one reason why he hates Dragaerans so much is not just because of being fundamentally an outsider (though that's a big part of it) but also because he's spent his entire life bouncing off this brick wall of incuriosity and resistance to change that is more fundamentally alien to him than anything else about them.
Which is probably why, when he does start making friends with Dragaerans, it's with the misfits and weirdos and outsiders, the curious and the different -- Sethra and Morrolan, Aliera and Kragar.
... It also occurs to me that even if the Easterners weren't messed with in quite the same way as Dragaerans, the fact that the Dragaerans are constantly attacking them (in a way that is basically built into Dragaeran DNA) is probably also dragging them down and preventing them from having achieved, say, spaceflight and other forms of high tech by now.
It's just such absolutely wonderful worldbuilding, a really brilliant subversion of a bunch of standard fantasy-world tropes that are turned on their ear and put through a science fiction blender.
ETA:
rachelmanija has additional thoughts building off my post; you can read them here. (Also very spoilery.)
no subject
I mean, whether or not the second word is derived from the first, it's still a distinct enough concept to need a separate term for it (which apparently a lot of languages that don't have very many color words actually also do; instead of having words for "blue" and "green" you'd have "sky color" and "tree color" and so forth), eventually evolving into a completely different word over time.
(It IS a weirdly specific thing to pick out as important, since brandy really IS just basically a variety of wine, but ... Vlad. XD)
no subject
Languages can be really particular about what they see as relevant difference to warrant a separate noun, and which can be lumped into one main category. Like in Russian it's really common to use the same word for brother and a male cousin (though you can specify the difference with an adjective before brother, which however isn't that common, or use the French loanword for cousin like English) same for sister and female cousin, but there is no joined word for "siblings" you have to say "brothers and sisters". Also no word for grandparents, just "grandfather and grandmother". But on the other hand they get really particular about their in-laws, with different words for whether it is the husband's or the wife's parents, and also for brothers and sisters in law. Which I find hard to remember because in German that is only one relationship category and of course English doesn't even bother with having any extra eord, just sticks "in-law" at the end.
Not sure whether that says anything deep about how families work or it's just random quirks. The groupings languages decide on often seem kind of arbitrary, like how different languages sort baked goods and draw the lines between what in English is say "bread" vs. "cake" vs. "pie". Even in closely related languages, where people make very similar kinds of baked goods there are different lines drawn when the categories settled. Like German instead has Brot (yeast breads and savory quick breads), Kuchen (sweet quick breads, sweet fruit pies, simple cakes without layers or cream fillings), Torte (elaborate cakes with layers, certain cream pies, both could possibly seem a subset of Kuchen as the more general term) and Pastete (savory pies).
I will never stop finding it weird that it is called "banana bread" in English, because nobody would call that "Brot" in German -- it is definitely "Kuchen" because sweet baked goods can only rarely be called bread in German, usually if they are sweet yeast breads (brioche or such). I just don't get why anyone would put banana bread as closer to rye bread than to chocolate cake, and why that filling distinction has such primacy that makes out chocolate pie closer to meat pie than to chocolate cake.
no subject
Even in English, I think the "bread" thing (and what can be called that) is different between the UK and US. But yeah, where you draw the line between similar-ish objects in different languages or just in common usage is also interesting! I remember reading a thread awhile back, someplace like Metafilter or Tumblr, where the participants were trying to work out the exact definition of "soup" vs. "cereal" and it is really hard to figure out the exact line! (Some soups can be cold, some can have grains or milk in them, etc.) But we usually know exactly which one to call it when we see it.
no subject
Incidentally German doesn't really have a word for "cereal". There's muesli of course, and you can say "Frühstücksflocken" (breakfast flakes) or "Getreideflocken" (grain flakes) if you don't want to be as specific as "cornflakes", "rolled oats" or brand names, but no "cereal" as in "having cereal for breakfast". (The only place I've ever seen "Cerealien" as a foreign word was in ads trying to sell some sugary concoction as healthy but it is not in everyday use.)
no subject
Like in Russian it's really common to use the same word for brother and a male cousin (though you can specify the difference with an adjective before brother, which however isn't that common, or use the French loanword for cousin like English)
I'm really curious about the use of brat for cousin without a modifier, because I don't think I've ever run into that with my group of Russian speakers (from Ukraine), but now that you mention it I might've noticed it with some Moscow (I think?) folks I know, which struck me as very weird at the time.
I do use the French "cousin" a lot instead, because "dvoyurodnyj brat" is so unwieldy. But the other thing I find is, it's much easier to use "cousin" generically in English -- for your first cousin, or your fourth cousin, or your third cousin once removed -- but you can't do that in Russian because you have to specify the degree of relatedness in the actual term, or it's wrong, and also you can't really say "dvoyurodnyj brat" when what you mean is "dvoyurodnyj dyadya". So when talking about less straightforwardly related cousins/cousin-type relatives in Russian, I always end up either using the French word or just the English one.
So I think it's actually another case where Russian enforces more granular subdivisions in family relationships than, say, English does...
no subject
Also, a Russian podcaster I listen to (iirc from near St. Petersburg), who does podcasts where he doesn't do grammar or such a lot but just casually talks relatively clearly and slowly with a lot of rephrasing to explain words, talked about a conversation he had with his mother about a "брат" he didn't know, the kid of some uncle or something, and then he did a brief aside explaining the usage. So that guy did it in fairly normal speech.
My RL teacher in my course (originally from St. Petersburg) just told us to use cousin (which you do in German as well as the older native German words are now really uncommon), and about the in-law situation he basically just mentioned it briefly, said sympathetically that it's a mess and that he also always has to think a moment which is which because he doesn't have any in-laws himself so it never comes up for him.
no subject
*You are in the dark. You may be eaten by an indeterminate color.