This was initially going to be a comment on ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dhampyresa's blog, but it occurred to me that I spend way too much time bouncing around the internet, trying to convince people to read the Romanitas trilogy, and it would be nice to have one post about it that I can refer back to on later occasions. So consider this a rather flaily, incoherent primer.
It helps, I think, if you understand something about my tastes in stories. I will read or watch just about any iteration of story that engages with ideas of power, privilege and dispossession: who has power, and why, and who is dispossessed by that power, and why. But I need the stories to do something more: they need to place the blame for inequality and dispossession where it truly lies, on an institutional level, and on individuals within such institutions. The stories need to centre the dispossessed, although it's an added bonus if they consider the various ways in which power, empire and privilege corrupt and dehumanise those who benefit from them. And they need to show that the strength of the dispossessed lies in them finding common ground, making common cause, dismantling the systems that oppress them, supporting one another, carving out spaces in which they are able to safely assert their humanity.
It's for this reason that I keep returning to the Pagan Chronicles by Catherine Jinks, the works of John Marsden, Galax Arena by Gillian Rubinstein and the other powerful, formative books of my childhood. It's for this reason that shows like Pretty Little Liars, Orphan Black, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Orange Is The New Black have resonated so strongly with me. In various ways, they explore these vital ideas. Their characters are the dispossessed, whether they be Christian Arab squires thrown into exile by the Third Crusade (or the Cathar heretic daughter of said squires, traumatised by the politics of thirteenth-century Languedoc), teenage resistance fighters, children stolen off the streets to artificially extend the lives of the super-rich, bullied teenage girls, clones whose creators view them as patented scientific material, or the inhabitants of a women's prison. Over and over again such stories show their dispossessed central characters banding together, supporting one another, and insisting on their own autonomy and humanity in the face of those who refuse to acknowledge it.
This is the backdrop against which my love for the Romanitas trilogy should be understood.
( Cut for non-detailed discussion of slavery, empire and colonialism )
I hope that helps at least in laying out the reasons why this series works for me. I love it. I hope that other people love it too.
dhampyresa's blog, but it occurred to me that I spend way too much time bouncing around the internet, trying to convince people to read the Romanitas trilogy, and it would be nice to have one post about it that I can refer back to on later occasions. So consider this a rather flaily, incoherent primer.It helps, I think, if you understand something about my tastes in stories. I will read or watch just about any iteration of story that engages with ideas of power, privilege and dispossession: who has power, and why, and who is dispossessed by that power, and why. But I need the stories to do something more: they need to place the blame for inequality and dispossession where it truly lies, on an institutional level, and on individuals within such institutions. The stories need to centre the dispossessed, although it's an added bonus if they consider the various ways in which power, empire and privilege corrupt and dehumanise those who benefit from them. And they need to show that the strength of the dispossessed lies in them finding common ground, making common cause, dismantling the systems that oppress them, supporting one another, carving out spaces in which they are able to safely assert their humanity.
It's for this reason that I keep returning to the Pagan Chronicles by Catherine Jinks, the works of John Marsden, Galax Arena by Gillian Rubinstein and the other powerful, formative books of my childhood. It's for this reason that shows like Pretty Little Liars, Orphan Black, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Orange Is The New Black have resonated so strongly with me. In various ways, they explore these vital ideas. Their characters are the dispossessed, whether they be Christian Arab squires thrown into exile by the Third Crusade (or the Cathar heretic daughter of said squires, traumatised by the politics of thirteenth-century Languedoc), teenage resistance fighters, children stolen off the streets to artificially extend the lives of the super-rich, bullied teenage girls, clones whose creators view them as patented scientific material, or the inhabitants of a women's prison. Over and over again such stories show their dispossessed central characters banding together, supporting one another, and insisting on their own autonomy and humanity in the face of those who refuse to acknowledge it.
This is the backdrop against which my love for the Romanitas trilogy should be understood.
( Cut for non-detailed discussion of slavery, empire and colonialism )
I hope that helps at least in laying out the reasons why this series works for me. I love it. I hope that other people love it too.