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BLOODCHILD RESPONSES

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? I loved it. I was immediately invested in Butler's storytelling. I like fantasy a lot, especially when it discusses societies and culture which is different from the Tolkien mold. Incorporating fantastical, unfamiliar creatures will instantly draw my attention. 2. What connections did you make with the story that you read? Discuss elements of the work with which you were able to connect. The connection I made with the story was not so much a personal one as it was one based on fascination. I like dense, compelling world building. If attentive craftsmanship is apparent in the text then it will appeal to me. It is what I try to achieve as a storyteller. Stories such as Bloodchild serve as my inspiration. 3. What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make? I am an illustrator, so if I were to adapt the story into a graphic novel, that would mean that m
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REALITY

The reality portrayed within The Anubis Gates is an alternate timeline. Steampunk is often speculative fiction; fiction that takes a certain point in history and hypothesizes on its survival, and because the steam industry was pioneered by the British, steampunk as a genre is often inexorably linked to Britain as a setting. In The Anubis Gates, the British have conquered Egypt and essentially erased its culture, playing on Britain's own history of imperialism to create a realistic antagonist for an otherwise fantastical novel. Though the story involves time travel (which is a perfect format to explore the altered aspects of this new reality), it is still rooted in a historically accurate foundation.
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THE FICTION OF IDEAS

In the context of a futuristic dystopia in which individualism and free thought is seen as an affront to society, ideas are often dangerous and revolutionary in nature. To think and formulate ideas is to go against the comforts and stability of the hivemind. Often the peoples of these self-indulgent empires have been lulled into a sense of complacency, their minds dulled from neglect, to the point in which any deviance from the norm is profoundly upsetting. Rydra explores new ideas within the context of her field as a writer but that evolves into terror and sedition as she investigates the origins of the mysterious language. As a mind reader, she has keen insight to the human psyche and it's her profession of a writer that, in a more romantic sense, represents the power of language by placing her in a position where she has total command over it.
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URBAN FANTASY

In Anansi Boy , songs are the eternal medium which immortalizes old legends. Fat Charlie's family name, Nancy, is an obvious nod to the Anansi of legend. The original Anansi is a spider god who plays tricks on humans; the character of Spider is no different, as he sees the people around him as ephemeral and, in the case of women, interchangeable. As an African folktale character, Anansi is less familiar to English audiences than figures such as Zeus and Hercules. Instead of choosing a more familiar subject, Gaiman chose to center the story on Anansi and his descendants, thus forcing uninitiated audiences to adopt at least a rudimentary grasp of the original story. Urban fantasy is often about humanizing the mythological figures addressed in their stories and reshaping them according to new, industrialized environments. Anansi's death is played out through hospital rooms and funerals; in stages that mortals can relate to. The family dysfunction is a human element that audien
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HARRY POTTER

Children's fiction has often been used to communicate adult themes to a young audience. Harry Potter is no different, though it disguises its themes of injustice, war, classism, and prejudice through a child-friendly allegory. It is commonly believed that addressing racism through a more literal perspective, such as having a black character be confronted with prejudice, is too disturbing of an exercise for children, but somehow when you use elves and dwarves it becomes an acceptable parable. The tension between pureblooded wizards and "mudbloods," or Muggle-borns, is an example of racism within the wizarding world. This hostility is so pervasive that it affects the background of the whole story and motivates the main conflict. (JK Rowling faced criticism for using white characters to represent racially marginalized demographics, which is an unchallenging and perhaps counterproductive way of telling stories about racism. Conversely, it could be considered an exercise in
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A RICH FANTASY LIFE

Lord of the Rings isn't the first entry in the fantasy genre, but it was the fantasy story which defined the genre as a whole. Lord of the Rings and its predecessor, The Hobbit , adhere to the fantasy formula with devotion erring on cliche. Legendary stories can get away with cliches because they're considered the defining examples of their respective genres. The traditional storytelling outline of your average fantasy novel remains the same: an adventure is presented to the protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, who is reluctantly forced to accept it. He receives assistance through a cadre of supporting characters that offer a variety of talents. They travel across Mordor, introducing the audience to every facet of the encountering a variety of challenges which the party surmounts until they reach their final objective. The final adversary is usually a great, evil entity. Elves weren't a new storytelling convention either, but Lord of the Rings did make them a staple of fan
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WEIRD FICTION

Three Moments of an Explosion opens with a deadpan enumeration of all the ways in which corporate America has influenced the setting. A burger company (probably Burger King) sponsors a demolition. Apple has expanded its repertoire from technology to actual apples.  The narration flaunts terminology such as "squib" and "rotvertising," a portmanteau of rot  and advertising . But hey, that's not important. In an equally perfunctory, matter-of-fact tone, the narrator describes a child from the Make-A-Wish foundation pressing the plunger for the demolition. This is weird fiction in a nutshell. Weird fiction, as a genre, requires the storyteller to have a thorough understanding of the original genre so it can then be subverted. Weird fiction usually takes place in dystopian universes. These dystopias are usually taken to an absurd extent and received by the populace as completely ordinary; corporations exert an outlandish degree of control over society as a whole.
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