get comfy in your wire chairs it's a new episode

Shonalika and Adam talk about N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season and the rest of the books in the Broken Earth trilogy.

Strong spoilers from the very beginning, and also for the Machineries of Empire and Imperial Radch books.

we thought/talked about this series even more after the podcast was over, here are some additional notes from Shona:

• Schaffa forgetting most of who he is and consequently becoming a 'better' person is a lot less interesting/compelling than the same resulting from introspection and deliberate change, making him more of a plot device than a character in the second and third books than the first
• the Guardians being vampires is unnecessary imo the story doesn't benefit particularly from them being very old, very strong, or literally parasitic. orogeny-negating magic is more than enough to make them top of the social hierarchy and the parasitic relationship is obvious already. an additional vampire metaphor is putting a hat on a hat
• the bit where they think there's an informant in Castrima really got me because the stone eaters can literally hide in the walls
• On the line that made my brain shortcircuit ('LAY THE BOY DOWN GENTLY IN THE WIRE CHAIR'): Behaving as if the genteel manner in which structural oppression is carried out overrides the harm of the oppression itself is a major feature of oppressive systems. If Scaffa is genuinely convinced this is the only way to do things, then by doing so politely he can genuinely consider himself loving and kind without cognitive dissonance. I've witnessed/experienced real white people exerting and excusing structural power with very similar behaviours and logic. The line appears unhinged not because Shaffa's relationship to his actions is unusual, but because most of us couldn't imagine justifying this particular form of oppression in our current social context. The only differential is the exact social permissions
• On further reflection I think it might be one of the most brilliant lines in the series and I'm pissed I didn't formulate these thoughts properly while we were recording

Shonalika's stuff // Adam's blog