Brandon Sanderson Q&A video and highlights

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending Brandon Sanderson's book signing and Q&A event organized by Bakka Phoenix Books (a fantastic store with wonderfully helpful staff) and Toronto Public Libraries. Sanderson is probably my favourite fantasy author at the moment (as well as Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss and yes - G.R.R. Martin), the author of very inventive Mistborn series, the new Stormlight series, and particularly famous right now for his continuation and conclusion of The Wheel of Time series. I also got a chance to ask him a few questions myself. So anyway, a few highlights from the Q&A:

- There will be two more trilogies in the Mistborn series. One will be set in the modern-day equivalent of the Mistborn world, the other will be set in the sci-fie equivalent of the same universe. There may also be another bridging novel between the two, just like "The Alloy of Law" is bridging the first and second Mistborn trilogies.

- Sanderson will have two YA books coming out this year. I actually look forward to picking them up, for myself as well as my students. I really think he can pull of YA well.

- The only things that Sanderson introduced into The Wheel of Time that weren't there before were more interesting tricks that Dreamwalkers could do, and more uses for gateways and Travelling. Personally I think he actually did a better job playing around with the magic system than Jordan did himself.

- Sanderson confessed that there are currently no plans for him to do either prequels or sequels to the Wheel of Time, but if he could, he'd do a prequel novella or a short story or two about Tam, Rand Al'Thor's father. I had a chance to ask him to elaborate on any further Wheel of Time projects, he mentioned that he'd love to see a video game adaptation, perhaps about Tam or based around an Aiel character. Given that I think SEGA has the rights to the Wheel of Time video game franchise right now, it might not be impossible. I just hope it'll turn out better than the Song of Ice an Fire video game adaptations.

- While there was already a list created by Jordan regarding which characters were to die in WoT's last book "A Memory of Light", both Sanderson and Harriet (Jordan's wife and editor of WoT) also bumped off a few more characters in order to successfully resolve the ending.

- Yes, the epilogue of the Wheel of Time in its entirety was written (dictated) by Jordan, and apparently the ambiguous ending was intended that way by Jordan himself. Personally I don't see the ending as being ambiguous at all, but apparently a lot of fans didn't get it or something.

- Sanderson put more Aviendha into the last three books than originally planned, because she is his favourite character. When asked about what were his favourite parts in "his" three Wheel of Time books he stated that Aviendha's and Perrin's chapters were his favourite.

- Very few questions were asked about Stormlight Archives series (which I thought was a shame), but Sanderson is planning on really spinning it out into a huge sprawling epic high fantasy series, and that the timeline will be quite long. So we can probably expect many of the characters from the first book to not make it.

Anyway, those were the big highlights for me. Enjoy the video, I hope it didn't turn out too bad.

Two Minutes of Hate

Sometimes catharsis can come from the most unexpected places. For me it was the realization that I use the word 'hate' too much and that it is an indication that I hate too much. Someone I know posted something on facebook and I made a tongue-in-cheek comment about how it combined all three things I hate (for those curious the three things were Disney World, Starbucks and Harry Potter). Another friend of the original poster replied to my comment and... Well, it spiraled out of control. Or at least it almost did. Maybe this person was a huge Harry Potter fan and she was tired of having to defend her tastes in the public domain all the time. Maybe this person was having a bad day. Or she did not understand Internet-style humour (do people really not know about Godwin's Law anymore?). After one comment, my reaction was that of laughing incredulity, but it got under my skin. And then the comment dug deeper and deeper. How dare she make assumptions about me? In minutes I was shaking with rage, thumbs aflutter composing a post so heinous and bilious that I nearly dropped the phone. Something I pride myself on is that I try to show my male students that they have to treat women with respect, as human beings, and here my post all but started with 'cunt' and went downhill from there. What was wrong here? What was wrong with this picture?

I deleted the post. Never replied to the comment. But that rage, that hate, refused to go away, it just sank deeper, lay still. Do I just post another snarky reply? Try to tone it down? In the end I did not reply at all and just let it lie. Hours later I made a separate wall post to the effect of "stupid people on the Internet". Why? To feel vindicated I guess. To feel I got the last word in. Which of course I didn't, because this person would not have seen my post. It did get me thinking though. Maybe what set the other person off wasn't a bad day, or a love for Harry Potter books. Maybe it was the word 'hate'. And maybe, what provoked such rage in me was that it exposed my reliance on hatred.

Human beings tend to see things in black and white. We can't help it I think. Like or dislike (perhaps facebook is far wiser than many people give it credit for not including a dislike button), yes or no. When given a communication outlet for our opinions that is as physically disassociated as the Internet, we have a tendency to push things to extremes. Like becomes love, dislike becomes hatred. Sardonic irony gets smeared over everything, and that I believe is also its own brand of hatred - the kind where you hate something or someone but you don't want to appear too worked up over it, so... irony it is. It works in reverse too, when I said 'hate' what I thought I was doing was being ironic: "No, I don't really "hate" it, I just dislike it, but it's somehow funnier if I say hate." Well, no, no it's not. If I said 'hate' then that's what the other person hears, and it's also what I want them to hear (whether I realize it or not). So really I'm trying to be ironic and earnest at the same time. The tone is irony, but the message is really "Look! I can take a strong stand on this issue! I have principles!" Dislike is wishy-washy, it's a wet towel of emotions, and we don't want to appear wishy-washy, now do we?

Hold on though, it's deeper than this. Did I say 'hate' to the person whose comments provoked the rage? No, I said 'hate' to the original post. Did I have to comment at all? Why post at all if my comment was a snarky kneejerk ironic reaction? What did I gain by it? Did I somehow enlighten the original poster as to the error of his ways? Did I make the world a better place? No, I just shitposted for the hell of it, to make a stand (but you know, in a physically safe, but emotionally charged way) to show that I could take a stand. And when someone else calls me out (rightly or wrongly) it put me on the defensive, it challenged my plan. Goddammit, I had this whole nice picture in my mind all laid out! It's a funny comment, it'll get a couple of likes, maybe a snarky response by the original poster, let bygones be bygones and let the good times roll on. Now how dare this stranger ruin my plan, challenge my power - nay, my right! - to ironically shitpost? Hence hate, hence rage. See, this is what I ultimately realized. Hatred is a natural emotion, but it's not a right, and it's not an expression of power that I think many people mistake it for. Hate is a response to power, hatred is not an emotion of a strong person, but an emotion of a weak person, or one who is unsure about the security of his power. So when someone challenges our hatred, it provokes rage. I think I could do better in the future.

The horror inherent in chains

Having recently seen Quentin Tarantino's latest film "Django Unchained", I came away satisfied but not quite. It does not feel quite as ambitious as the earlier "Inglorious Basterds", nor was it as intimate as "Deathproof", and while very entertaining at times, its pacing seemed constantly off. But this is not meant to be a review of the film as a film; I'd much rather mention the parts of the film that underscore the intense yet casual and systematic brutality of American slavery. What is surprising to me is that aside from a few excellent documentaries, there are very few feature films made about slavery, the lives of the slaves and the slave owners. Oh, there is Spielberg's excellent Amistad, and the amazing (in my opinion the best) Civil War film Glory, both of which have slave and ex-slave characters, but neither of which are about slavery. The rather poor adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin approaches the subject in more detail, but also with more paternalism (as indeed the novel did as well). What Django does extremely well, once we get past QT's signature dialogue, the morbid humour, the long and brutal shootouts and fight scenes, is how it shows the commonplace horrors of slavery in a way that really got under my skin once I noticed them.

*** Minor spoilers ahead ***

For me, one of the most striking shots, but one that I found after the film that the audience had missed, is a shot of the so-called 'hot box' - a half-buried wooden chest sitting in the middle of a lawn, well-outside of any possible shade, into which a recalcitrant slave is thrown as punishment, to endure the heat of the sun and all that it entails. Horrific punishment? Undoubtedly. But what really underscored the horror was that the hot box is situated in the middle of a perfectly manicured lushly green laws, whose greenery is broken by a well-beaten brown path leading only to the hot box. Let this mental image settle and digest for a minute. How many slaves would need to be escorted and thrown into the hot box year after year for their feet - and the feet of the guards - to make this well-beaten path? This one detail demonstrates both QT's genius as a film maker and the care with which he approaches the subject. One tiny detail suggests an entire system in place, rather than an arbitrary brutality.

Another equally striking scene is that of house slaves setting up a table in the fanciest European style (as the plantation owner is entertaining a European immigrant). Their movements are precise and practiced, the camera lingers on the motion of their fingers as the slaves carefully smooth the napkin after setting down each piece of cutlery and china. The scene is beautiful yet haunting - the juxtaposition between their status as slaves and the finery and opulence that surrounds them (is indeed in their hands!) is clear. This short scene serves as a preamble to a narratively more important dinner scene later on, but coming on the heels of the hot box (and one other scene) it has undeniable power. The director seems to be suggesting that the contrast isn't merely between wealth and slavery, but also between the different hierarchies among the slaves, and it does so in a purely visual way that is just as effective (if not more so) than Samuel L. Jackson's excellent performance as the house slave butler.

I'll conclude with another powerful scene. A character is walking with a beautiful slave girl on plantation grounds, inspecting it as it were. Throughout the long shot there is a sound of a whip cracking in the background and it's getting louder. The audience of course tenses up - we think we know what's coming. Yet observe the background and the slave girl giving the tour. Life is going on in the background, children playing, women washing linen, and so on. Can the slaves not hear the whip? Of course they can. Do they not feel pain and horror at having one of their number ? Of course they do. But to them the crack of the whip becomes the background noise of everyday life which is already brutish, nasty and short. The implication in the seemingly tranquility of life in the background is that such an occurrence is so systematic and pervasive that it does not bear thinking about consciously.

There are many other similar details, often tiny and background, that underscore the brutality of the system, and for that QT should receive high accolades indeed, because behind the dialogue, the Western tropes, the humour, the stylish (sometimes even cartoony) violence, "Django Unchained" is an honest and unflinching look at a very dark time and place in American history. Nowadays, despite having a black president, there are many attempts to whitewash the history, often in reaction to historical revisionism of 1960s-1990s. Textbooks are being rewritten to eliminate any mention that the Founding Fathers were for the most part slave owners, that many American presidents were slave owners and profited from it greatly, that slavery was not merely an evil perpetuated by individuals but that it was an integral part of American political and economic history. But that's a discussion for another time.