Consonance & Assonance: The Last Unicorn, chapter 13, for the third time · 8:08pm May 24th, 2022
I was copy-pasting text from my posts on the Last Unicorn (here and here), and realized I never mentioned the consonance and assonance. Here's a bit of chapter 13 with that boldfaced:
... Above them, on the cliff, King Haggard's castle splayed up towards a gray-green morning sky splashed with thin, milky clouds. Molly was sure that the king himself must be watching from one of the tremulous towers, but she could not see him. A few stars still fluttered in the heavy blue sky over the water. The tide was out, and the bald beach had the gray, wet gleam of a stripped shellfish, but far down the strand the sea was bending like a bow, and Molly knew that the ebb had ended.
The unicorn and the Red Bull stood facing each other at the arch of the bow, and the unicorn's back was to the sea. The Bull moved in slowly, not charging, but pressing her almost gently towards the water, never touching her. She did not resist him. Her horn was dark, and her head was down, and the Bull was as much her master as he had been on the plain of Hagsgate, before she became the Lady Amalthea. It might have been that same hopeless dawn, except for the sea.
Yet she was not altogether beaten. She backed away until one hind foot actually stepped into the water. At that, she sprang through the sullen smolder of the Red Bull and ran away along the beach.
Too much? It seems a little showy to me, but I think I like it anyway. I think my uneasiness with it is due not to the consonance itself, but to its inconstancy. I see no pattern to it. When I read it, I imagine Peter Beagle choosing certain paragraphs at random and working consonance into them. This vision of the author at work makes the style visible, and therefore intrusive.
Interesting; thanks.
Traditional alliteration is less showy but more powerful than consonance: it matches the first consonantal sound of the first accented syllables of two or more words. This is the alliteration of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
Welsh poetry has a whole formalized system of consonance and assonance called cynghanedd. The effect in Welsh is sublime but in English it's comic (a cheap and chippy chipper on a big black block)
If you want to see someone make consonance and assonance a complete lifestyle choice, Charles Algernon Swinburne is your man:
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
--"Proserpine" (Persephone)
I loved this passage from The Last Unicorn but had never recalled it until now. Of all the fantasy books I read after finishing The Lord of the Rings, this came closest to recapturing the first thrill of it. And now I know why: Beagle used prosody. Not as well as Tolkien, but well enough.
Thank you.
There are days like this when I fear that I shall forever occupy the shallow end of the writing pool, playing with the inflatables and splashing around, because when I approach the deep waters, all I can think of is how I miss my water wings.
I fell in love with Beagle's prose when I first read the Last Unicorn. It reintroduced me to the power of metaphor, imagery, and what you called in your other blog non-literal descriptions (tremulous towers, stars fluttering), something I hadn't realized being drenched in internet conversation about what made good (fanfic) writing had sucked me dry of. Everyone used to avoid it because they thought it all fell under the dreaded category of purple prose. Which it doesn't. Purple prose is the failed version of a style, not the good style itself.
By the way, I also think Beagle's descriptions have a personifying aspect to them: tremulous towers and fluttering stars give me the sense they're alive in a way, as if the towers tremble from fear, or excitement. It lends a human element to an inanimate world. I think that makes the writing more interesting and engaging, because it conveys interesting thoughts/ideas/concepts. It lends normal objects some character.
5661243
Do you think it would be inappropriate for some subjects--say, hard SF?
5661356
Hm, I would say not necessarily. Now I've not read hard sci-fi, among other genres, but my belief is that different styles have different effects (and communicate differently), and therefore suite different purposes, which are up to the author. I don't believe there's one style that always fits a particular genre. Style is an ingredient, and which one you use depends on what you want to bake and how you want it to taste. So I think you can absolutely use a style for hard sci-fi that's more associated with (in this case) fantasy. I think that could be creative. Besides, if it's never been done before then that's how you can stand out, if you manage it successfully.
But how about you, what do you think?
5661651
I suppose lending a human element to an inanimate world could be useful in particular instance within a hard SF story, but only in special cases, and in contexts where the reader isn't encouraged to think that's a productive way of looking at the world. It's too close to animism and superstition to jive with any hard SF theme.
But I conceive of genre differently than other people do. I think most people associate genres with trappings: spaceships, dragons, magic, mysteries, mayhem, guns, swords, detectives, serial killers, romantic relationships, marriage, etc.
I associate a genre more with worldviews.
- Hard-boiled detective fiction is moralistic and cynical.
- Romance is interested in romance. This is different than fantasy being interested in dragons, but not so different from fantasy being interested in magic. "Romance" specifies a feeling; "magic" specifies an epistemology; but a dragon is just a dragon. You can use romance in any genre that isn't likewise defined by a feeling, and use dragons or ray guns in any genre that isn't defined by physical trappings.
- Science fiction looks forward eagerly to new discoveries and possibilities; fantasy longs to return to an earlier simplicity and a state of social stasis. Star Wars is fantasy. Not sure about Dune. It's also got a feudal society with monsters and magic, but the terraforming angle is SF. Not sure about Watership Down; it's called fantasy, but doesn't use fantasy tropes or attitudes.
There's something self-contradictory in mixing SF with fantasy, because they look in opposite directions. Ada Palmer's recent quadrology /Terra Ignota/ does that, and this makes it unsatisfactory SF to me, because its combination of looking forward and looking backward at the same time results in a stunted worldview, which pretends to long for a limitless future, but wants that future to be run as a classical or medieval hierarchy, with classical or medieval politics, following the Great Man theory of history, taking ancient Greeks and Romans as role models, and arguing about theology or ancient Greek philosophy.
Nikolai Gogol wrote a story called "The Nose" about a man whose nose ran away and became a magistrate, and how he eventually got it back. But it doesn't feel like fantasy.
5661691
What if new discoveries and possibilities are pitched as a path for returning to a simpler state? There are open-ended technologies whose development may be much easier to understand than their adoption. If their purpose can be posed as a kind of glue between simpler social roles, one that that takes care of the complexities, then you'd have:
Is there a self-contradiction there?
5665188
I don't think there's any self-contradiction, but I think it's very unlikely for an author who idealizes simplicity & social stasis to be interested in discoveries, possibilities, and technology, or to turn to technology for solutions. It's like looking for polygamous Christians. The Bible says nothing against polygamy, unless we count the passage that says a church deacon/elder/bishop should have one wife; but Christianity is HIGHLY correlated with monogamy.
5665343
That's good to hear. I'm giving a pony presentation soon, and I realized after reading 5661691 that my call-to-action was part hard sci-fi, part fantasy, pretty much exactly as you described them.
5665431 What and where is the pony presentation?
It's on AI content generation & fandom data. I'll send you the info by email.
5661691
I don't really have a conceptualization of genre myself (it's difficult for me to pin down), but I agree that whatever it is, it goes deeper than its trappings (though it seems the trappings matter too, unless we want to say you could write a hard SF which has no technology or science in it. Perhaps you could). Star Wars is fantasy, I agree. Though it's visually loaded with SF elements it doesn't feel like SF, really, it feels like fantasy. Which is interesting because it doesn't have any classical fantasy trappings in it; instead it has substitutions. Jedi/Sith for wizards and knights, the force for magic, light sabers for swords, etc. But I can't quite imagine this going the other way: a SF story with no actual SF elements in it but instead substitutions, things which fill the same role. But what besides science and technology fills the role of science and technology? Steampunk maybe? But that's still technology, just more mechanical than electrical.
I guess you wouldn't classify futuristic dystopian stories as SF then, correct? Though I suppose no one does; they classify them as dystopian. And I certainly agree. But I do think of them as secondarily SF (the very few I've seen, at least). Blade Runner has a lot of SF elements in it which are central to it. But it definitely doesn't look forward to new technologies or have any optimism about the future.
Anyway, I like the idea that worldviews play a part in genre, even a central part.
Hm, I don't see it that strongly, I see it more as a creative way of presenting a story. Less dry and clinical. More colorful. Not that there's anything wrong with a less metaphorical or personifying kind of description in prose; depending on your story that style may well better suit it.
Like, I think in a story you could describe, say, the doorways in the Death Star as tall and domineering, or its general aesthetic as arrogant (not saying I actually think this, it's just an example). It doesn't literally make sense, but I think it's more creative than saying "gray", and makes better use of the medium of words, since it isn't simply conveying visual information, which the medium of film excels at. And it's just more fun (a matter of taste, true).
But depending on your goals with the story (theme, mood, worldview), this might be the wrong style.
Though, perhaps in contradiction, I also think if you've got a truly good story, then it almost doesn't matter what style of prose you use, and whether that style is done well or not, people will still enjoy it. I think this is why some stories can transition mediums. Though not all good stories can, I admit. I've never been interested in the novelization of any of the Star Wars films, for instance.
5665462
Do you still work on the AI voice synthesizer for mlp?
5666642
I work on a bunch of related stuff. The same people doing the voice synthesizer(s) are also interested in image, story, and animation generation.
https://voca.ro/1fIHi4gpzB5a
I never worked on the actual synthesizer, by the way. I mostly just did (and still do) data stuff.
i.ibb.co/Yf6YgW0/renders-mlp509-401-Comp-0.gif
i.ibb.co/C9kJqL2/renders-mlp502-494-0.gif
i.ibb.co/3Wr8S4T/renders-MLP422-065-0.gif
i.ibb.co/rQdZLh9/renders-MLP509-538-0.gif
i.ibb.co/jkbCjVD/renders-MLP624-147-0.gif
i.ibb.co/T0VTdZN/renders-MLP624-275-1.gif
i.ibb.co/5nqN0KR/renders-MLP819-069-0.gif
i.ibb.co/tB8WF7H/renders-MLP713-197-0.gif
5666642
How about Harry Potter? The magic in Harry Potter is repeatable and programmatic, giving it a mechanical feel. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality feels very science-fictional to me.
Good question. I would consider 1984, Brave New World, and Blade Runner science fiction. I don't consider Michael Crichton novels, like Jurassic Park, science fiction. Maybe because the former are thoughtful, and the latter are not. Science fiction deals with ideas; horror just harps on fears.
For a case of fine distinction: I think of John Campbell's story "Who Goes There?" as science fiction, but of the movie Alien as horror. Both are about an alien run amok on a space station, killing off the humans. But in Aliens, the alien is just a monster. In WGT, the alien is a shapeshifter who assumes the shape of people it's eaten. So nobody trusts anyone else. The story is a kind of SF parable showing that social trust is necessary, and that trust should be based on reason. The crew have to figure out how to reliably tell an alien from a human.
So, maybe I'll say SF considers possible futures from an empirical scientific perspective, which demands a certain rigor of all claims. Perhaps an SF story provides a tentative answer to a question. Brave New World gives one thoughtful and well-supported answer to, "Can we engineer a perfect society?", and it is a rather intricate argument. (BTW, Brave New World strongly resembles Plato's Republic, but Huxley never commented on whether that was intentional.) Michael Crichton novels always answer the question "Is science good?", and always answer "No!"; but Crichton, unlike SF novels, makes no effort to wall off any of the obvious paths of escape. That is, in something like 1984 or Brave New World, the hero tries many things to avoid whatever disaster, but they all fail, giving it a feeling of logical inevitability. There's no such inevitability to Jurassic Park; it doesn't make an argument that scientists recreating old species will always end up freeing velociraptors.
5666663
You can synthesize animation?? Shows how out of the loop on this tech I am. Part of me wants to ask if that's really easier than just plain animating, but eh, it's cool either way. :P
5666749
Interesting. I hadn't considered Harry Potter, never having read or watched it, but I've read stories here where magic is treated like a kind of electrical energy, essentially, which ponies control with their minds. It does make the magic feel less like fantasy and more like science fiction. I don't know what the difference is between that and what I've seen classified as "hard magic systems", which have strict rules, presumably lending a more mechanical, repeatable feel to them.
Yes I do think the best SF asks questions, particularly moral ones which couldn't be asked otherwise (Star Trek's City on the Edge of Forever, for instance). Though what use such questions are to us could be up for debate, since they involved circumstances that may never occur.
I think it's also worth considering where the line falls between SF and non-SF versus good SF and bad SF. In other words, what's the difference between a bad SF story and a non-SF story, if a non-SF story can have SF elements in it, like futuristic technology? Perhaps Jurassic Park is just bad scifi, but good horror? I dunno. (Never seen Jurassic Park, I should say. Perhaps you're noticing a pattern here...)
5668193
Not yet. We probably will be able to one day, but not yet. Those are clips from the show.
5668290
Oh, then what did you mean by "animation generation"? Just plain ol' animation I guess?
5669061
We're working on animation generation, but we don't have it done yet. The images I showed were plain ol' animation, pulled from a dataset of some tens of thousands such clips.
5669108
Ah, I gotcha now.