Month: November 2018

Brain freeze.  That’s possibly the best way to describe my stress response.  Metaphorically, my brain stumbles, frizzy-haired and wild-eyed, into a classroom, late to a midterm she didn’t realize was happening, and the world — whom I imagine to be a disappointed, McGonagall-esque sort of presence — slides her a multiple choice exam sheet and an exam with only one question: “You must handle [insert stressor here], what is your best response?

A) Fight

B) Flight

C) Freeze

D) None of the above, handle this situation in a way you know you are capable of doing”

And my brain, in all of her primitive and evolutionary wisdom, lights up, because she knows the answer (everyone knows this one, it’s so easy)!  Iiiiiiiiit’s… freeze (because the answer is always C)!

Thus, I freeze.  I freeze like a possum playing dead, like a stone eater aboveground, like a corpse in rigor mortis (not playing dead). I freeze like cream-that-will-soon-be-ice-cream in liquid nitrogen.  Continue reading “Split Self: Essun’s Identities (And My Own Procrastination)”

As established throughout The Broken Earth series, orogenes have the ability to connect to one another via their orogeny and become more powerful as a result of this. Utilizing this ability to foster greater orogeny through connections, Essun was able to activate the Obelisk Gate, wipe out Rennanis and their army and locate her daughter via the network of obelisks in The Obelisk Gate, all due to the focus granted to her by her connection to the roggas of Castrima. Other groups of connections formed in the distant past of Syl Anagist composed of the tuners that were used by their oppressors to utilize the Obelisk Gate as Essun does in the future, but for Syl Anagist’s own purposes. It is my own theory that these connections function as an analogy to the metaphorical connections one forms with another that they trust and depend on, or relationships. I intend to more closely examine the nature of the more mystical connections orogenes share and compare them to relationships in order to confirm or deny my theory of analogy. Continue reading “The Link Between Worlds (and people)”

While combing through all three novels to look for quotes for a blog post I’m currently writing, I took a second to once again look at Jemisin’s dedications. These drew my attention because of how impersonal they are. Generally, book dedications will be for friends, family, or even a funny shout out to the fans. But Jemisin’s are distinctly different than most that I have encountered before. Upon first glance they can be slightly confusing, however, the more you read and the more knowledge of this world that you acquire, the more they begin to make sense. Continue reading “The Art of The Dedication”

Since The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin’s use and significance of the word “shattering” in the trilogy has always intrigued me but I constantly felt that I was unable to coherently parse enough thoughts together to formulate a blog post about it. As I scrolled through the 101/431 tag on the (Im)Possibilities blog, it only made sense for Abby’s post to catch my eye with her introductory blurb focusing on the earth’s shatterings in Jemisin’s world.

Continue reading “Shattering Season(s)”

A few weeks ago we read selected passages from the works of Octavia Butler. I noticed that in both Wild Seed and Dawn there were references to breeding practices and I remembered that in Jemisin’s work there is an entire use-caste devoted to breeding. Selective breeding, of course, has its own place in human history, but I began to wonder why it was such a common theme in both science-fiction and fantasy novels.

Continue reading “Breeding in Science Fiction”

While working on the group blog post about geologic disasters, I was recalled back to The Fifth Season when I read about communities of people who refused to leave their homes when disaster was imminent. Throughout the trilogy, the connection to home in the face of geologic disaster plays a pivotal part in places such as Allia and Castrima. I decided to look into why this occurs in our own world, and what it means for communities who face natural disasters.

Continue reading “The Connection towards Home”

One of the things I’ve most enjoyed about The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky is the development of Nassun as she comes to grips with the realities of the world. Her motivations in the third book have developed into an interesting parallel to Essun, as Nassun turns into a version of what Essun easily could have become. What I find most interesting is that even though Nassun is seeking an end to the world, I find her motivations completely understandable and it is as easy for me to root for her as it is for me to root for Essun.

Continue reading “Sympathy towards Nassun’s Motivations”

Before class on Monday, I was reading through the blog looking for inspiration for a new post. While I didn’t end up with a specific idea of what I wanted to write about in my next post, I did thoroughly enjoy reading Michee’s post, “The Dehumanization of Civilization.”  I knew I wanted to address her thought-provoking post, but I could not decide what I wanted to focus on in regards to expanding my own thoughts and connecting it to Jemisin’s work. However, in class, Dr. McCoy sarcastically said “life is sacred in Syl Anagist,” and I immediately knew what I wanted to write about. Both Michee’s post and Dr. McCoy’s repetition of a line from The Stone Sky got me thinking more about the value of life both on Earth and in Jemisin’s trilogy. I believe that in addition to the trilogy revealing that life in Jemisin’s worlds is not, indeed, “sacred,” our world today seems to increasingly disregard the value of human life. Continue reading “Earth and Syl Anagist: a Disregard for Human Life”