[takes a huge swig of apple juice]

Let’s talk about Atticus O’Sullivan’s taste in fiction.

A while back I did an article about intertextuality in fiction, particularly in regard to Rick Riordan’s more recent work and the use of pop culture references. I’d love for you all to go check that one out, but in case you don’t feel like it, here’s a reminder:

Intertextuality is a fancy way of talking about when texts refer to other texts. And when I say ‘text’ I don’t just mean books. In this sense, ‘text’ can mean any form of media or medium of art—books, poems, stories, songs, movies, television shows, paintings, sculptures, video games, and so on and so forth. Kind of like when a movie quotes the Bible, or a nerd character on TV quotes Star Trek.

Last time I talked about using current pop culture references for intertextuality, and how in many cases it’s a cheap way to sound relevant and cool to your audience, but that it will make the work sound dated very quickly once those bits of pop culture become irrelevant. Mentioning one of the hottest songs on the radio’s not going to make much sense years after that song’s gone out of the popular focus, especially if the band ends up a One Hit Wonder. I talked a bit then about how intertextuality can relate to characterization, but I’m going to try to talk about it more here, in regards to Atticus. He’s a perfect example of what not to do in characterization and intertextuality, among many other things because he’s a terrible character. Maybe this one’s too similar to the last article I did on the topic, but ImpishIdea’s been kind of dead the past few months and I need something to do with my time other than cry in the corner.

So the second book of the Iron Druid Chronicles is titled Hexed and yes there is a sporking in development, hold on to your pants. But upon my reread I came again upon the part where Atticus is playing a stupid stoner type to fool the cops (again), and then decides he’d subvert expectations by revealing that he’s memorized all of Shakespeare’s works (no really).1

Why does Atticus know all of Shakespeare by heart? [shrugs] I dunno. At least, I don’t know in-story why he does. There’s no Watsonian explanation. The Doylist, meta explanation is this: Hearne was a high school English teacher, and he thinks Shakespeare is cool, and since Atticus is the Coolest, Cleverest, and Sexiest of Men, he therefore must also love Shakespeare and know his works by heart. There’s no other reason.

And to be fair, from an outside-the-text perspective it’s at least consistent. Atticus acts a certain way and likes specific things because those are things that Kevin Hearne thinks are cool. That’s not in and of itself a bad thing, a character being a reflection of the author’s interests, but if it’s not consistent, it’s bad writing.

Because again, there’s no in-story reason for his love of Shakespeare. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: for a character who is supposed to be the most Irish Irishman to ever Irish, Atticus doesn’t give two craps about Ireland or Irish culture. If the man cared about Irish literature or art, he’d be all over Oscar Wilde, or W.E.B. Yeats, or George Bernard Shaw, or James Joyce, or Pat O’Shea, or Bram Stoker, or Eoin Colfer, or Jonathan Swift, or Lord Dunsany, or Sheridan LeFanu.

Now one could argue that this is because Atticus isn’t really Irish. He seems to have very little attachment to Ireland after he left in the Iron Age. His attitude towards the Troubles in Ireland reads very much like he’s stamping it with ‘Not My Problem’ and not caring at all. But this is contradicted when we see other aspects of his personality. He has an Irish bar he goes to all the time. He worships the Irish gods. He has an Irish wolfhound. His public persona is as a young Irish-American college-aged man. In essence, he has some tacked-on Irish traits that makes me suspect that we are supposed to think of him as a very Irish person. And yet his Irish identity is all surface-deep.

But Shakespeare? Why on Earth would Atticus drift towards the works of William Shakespeare? Not just that he likes them, but that he adores them enough to memorize them. He cares more about Shakespeare than his own gods, if that gives you an idea of how absurd this is. Shakespeare’s often called universal, but mostly by Englishmen and American Anglophiles. He’s a very English author to get worked up about.

Furthermore, there are several points in the books where Atticus, talking about mythical or fantastical creatures, will riff on modern pop cultural depictions, and say something like, “Oh these stupid people don’t know that’s not what faeries are really like! Those idiots!” and then go on to explain how they are in Hearne’s fictional world. Shakespeare is apparently the exception though; the faeries of the Hearne’s books are (in-theory) based in Irish mythology, but A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly isn’t. Yet this apparently doesn’t bother Atticus, who named his dog after the Shakespeare character (or possibly the folklore character Shakespeare based him off of, but I suspect given what we’ve been told and the specific spelling that it’s probably a Shakespeare reference).

So why is he such a fan of the Bard?

I imagine a large part of this is because Hearne, in naming Shakespeare as one of Atticus’s faves, is pulling a famous name that (if you live in the US) you’re bound to have heard of even if you failed every history class since middle school. That’s why he spent so many years hanging out with Genghis Khan, but doesn’t so much as mention Ogodei Khan, or Bato Khan, or Timur Lane, or Oda Nobunaga. Because they’re Asian conquerors you might not have heard of, despite being massively influential in their roles in history and being very well-known in their own times and cultures, so of course Atticus doesn’t so much as mention them.

That’s why Atticus likes Shakespeare. Because it’s recognizable to everyone in the English-speaking world. It’s certainly not because it fits with his character. The book tells us that Atticus is a paranoid and cautious man who avoids drawing attention to himself. Now let’s be honest based on what we actually see: Atticus is a violent sociopath who gets off on killing things for his own benefit. In either case, there’s no reason he would hang out with the equivalents of big name celebrities of different places in different parts of history. And why would he memorize Shakespeare? It’s like it’s supposed to be an example of what TV Tropes calls ‘Hidden Depths’, where a character shows a side you wouldn’t expect. But it’s not that this is a different side of a well-rounded character, it’s just… tacked onto a character it doesn’t make sense for.

Have you ever read Artemis Fowl? The title character has a bodyguard named Butler. Big bloke, good with guns and martial arts. Very serious. One of the tie-in books has interviews with all of the characters, and Butler’s interview has him admit that he doesn’t actually like action movies, because they’re too much like his own real life. He prefers romantic comedies. Then he says if the interviewer tells anyone that he’ll hunt them down. Now that is a hidden depth, because it shows a side of the character we’ve never seen before, but it doesn’t contradict what we’ve already seen. In fact, it kind of makes sense that he prefers to keep his mind off of work when he’s trying to relax.

Whereas with Atticus, we’re shown that he likes killing, he likes screwing with people using magic, he likes proving he’s Better Than You, and he likes sex. And yes, for the sake of fairness I must acknowledge that Shakespeare’s work has all of those things in it, but we don’t see that Atticus likes going to the theater or even reading. I don’t know if he really reads or watches anything that isn’t already incredibly popular. He very explicitly does not read books about Irish mythology, despite being an ancient Irish pagan; he tells the audience in the first book that he had to Google Irish myths on Aenghus Og to see what people today thought about him. He doesn’t know the first thing about Jane Austen, as he seems to think that all the characters spend their time swooning. He quotes Kill Bill and then refers to it as an anime. There is no mention of going to the theater, the opera, the library, or even seeing a movie or television that isn’t a mainstream pop cultural mainstay, like Star Wars or South Park. He seems to mock anyone with “nerd interests,” as well as the idea of getting acquainted with the politics in the country he currently lives in. I wouldn’t be surprised if he expressed disdain for the idea of reading, telling us that it’s uncool.2 After all, he keeps telling us how all the supernaturals should fit into the normal world, and then expressing the shallowest understanding of how modern people think and act, based on stereotypes dumber than the ones you’d get in political cartoons mocking millennials.

All of this adds up to a man who, by all reason, should not care one whit about the works of William Shakespeare. Whatever you think about Willy Shakes, his is a set of works immersed very heavily in politics and the arts. If you’re into Shakespeare, you will find yourself on the arts scene, and you will see people trying to apply it to politics both modern and historical.

And this is a shame because there are so many cool things you can do with characterization and intertextuality. For instance, my go-to example for intertextuality is always Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan because Khan goes to his death quoting Moby-Dick. And he has it memorized, because that’s one of the few books he had to read in his exile, but also because it is something he identifies with; Khan has this overwhelming hatred for Captain Kirk, just as Ahab does for the white whale. And he knows it’s unreasonable and in the end he knows he’s doomed, but he doesn’t care; he just needs to keep trying to kill this guy, even when it’s in his advantage to surrender, because he. Just. Can’t. Stop. Hating. This man.

Or with another science-fiction example: James Holden of The Expanse is such a huge fan of Don Quixote that he names his ship the Rocinante after the title character’s horse. And it fits, because Holden’s such a massive idealist who is willing to recklessly go and do things because they’re right, even if it messes with the status quo. And because the books aren’t stupid, it’s pointed out that Don Quixote isn’t actually supposed to be endorsing this kind of behavior; if anything, it’s mocking it, showing how it’s stupid and foolhardy. So when Holden sticks to this philosophy he’s always getting himself into unnecessary trouble that could have easily been avoided. Just like whoever wrote the musical Man of La Mancha, Holden doesn’t get that Cervantes didn’t want you to be like Don Quixote. And the narrative of The Expanse keeps showing us why.

Or hey, if we want to hop back to Shakespeare, from the first volume we see the title character of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman quoting Shakespeare. And considering that he is Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, the personification of creativity, yeah, it makes sense that he’s quoting someone who is considered by many in the English-speaking world to be one of the greatest writers of all time. But we learn later that he actually knew Shakespeare, and commissioned him to write the play he’s quoting, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as a gift to the king and queen of Faerie.

Or… fun example, the Pixar movie Coco. The song that Miguel’s ancestor Imelda falls back on in the film when she decides to sing is “La Llorona.” This is a song that has a lot of history in Mexico; a lot of its lyrics were written in the Mexican Revolution. The movie doesn’t really do much with dates, so it’s unclear when the deceased ancestors lived in an ordinary viewing. But by having this be the song that Imelda knows by heart, that she falls back on when she displays her singing abilities, indicates that she lived some time around the Mexican Revolution. More than that, it says a lot about her character; “La Llorona” is not about the ghost story, it’s about a woman who has been left by her lover and is completely devastated (hence she is “la llorona” or “the weeping woman”). And though Imelda tries to hide her pain by a tough exterior, her singing shows exactly how she really feels about her husband leaving her family.

We could keep doing this all day long: the movie Bruce Wayne saw before his parents died? Zorro, the prototypical superhero story about a badass who pretends to be a rich buffoon in public while using his wits and martial arts skills to fight for the people at night. The Creature in Frankenstein gets really attached to Paradise Lost because he feels, like Satan, to be someone rebelling against his creator, and also utterly hates himself. V for_V for Vendetta_ is obsessed with The Count of Monte Cristo because he thinks of himself as Edmond Dantes, a man wrongfully imprisoned who escapes and makes a convoluted revenge plan, not realizing, much like Dantes, that revenge will consume his reason and humanity.

But Shakespeare and Atticus is none of these things. It’s not a point of character development.

Atticus’s love of Shakespeare isn’t because it fits the character. Like Rick Riordan throwing pop culture references at you, it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s built entirely on the Rule of Cool. And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with writing based on the Rule of Cool, but it has to actually be, y’know, cool.

Atticus knowing all of Shakespeare isn’t there because Hearne genuinely cares about Shakespeare. To him, this is the height of intelligence. Atticus is not just an incredibly hawt guy who has goddesses in his bed regularly, he’s not just an uber-Druid who can heal from an injury and overpower all his foes with eco-friendly magic, he’s not just a clever, witty youth who can run circles around his stupid enemies, he’s ALSO so smart that he has all of Shakespeare memorized. I’d not be surprised if as the series went on Hearne also decided that he’s also a world-class chess player who can defeat champions in three moves and understands mathematics better than Stephen Hawking.

This isn’t good writing. This is pretty bad writing, actually. This is like having your Bad Boy leading man playing piano—a tacked-on trait to make someone feel smart. This is like putting quotes at the beginning of your book that have nothing to do with anything. This is like having your protagonist beat someone at checkers/chess in a few moves. It’s telling you that a character is smart without doing any of the work to show you.

And it’s a shame. Because if you’re writing a character, and your character has an obsession with a piece of art or an author, there should be a reason for it. Maybe it doesn’t have to have Plot Relevance, but it should have Character Relevance.

If you’re going to go through the effort of telling us that your character is a fan of this or that author, or watches this or that show, there has to be a reason behind it. Don’t just make your characters fans of the same fiction that you are if it doesn’t make any sense for them to be. Atticus has no reason to care about Shakespeare. It’s another (failed) attempt to impress the reader with how smart and cool he is.

Maybe I’m overreacting; this is far from the most egregious thing to happen in the Iron Druid Chronicles from a critical perspective. Maybe I just care because intertextuality is my jam. But hear me out: Hearne specifically made Atticus a fanboy of one of the most popular and talked about writers in the history of the English-speaking world, having him go so far as to memorize all of his work, which would take years of effort… and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just there to prove how his protagonist is Better Than You. Not to indicate how far this character will go to try to prove that he’s better than everyone else, like an actual character flaw; no, you’re supposed to read about this trait and be utterly in awe of this manly and witty specimen of a man.

And we’re not. We’re just disgusted by this gross, monstrous character, and baffled by the author’s numerous attempts to tell us he’s an admirable man instead of the lecherous, violent sociopath he is.

1 “Wait a minute,” you might be saying. “Wouldn’t revealing that he’s memorized Shakespeare prove that he’s not the stupid stoner he’s pretending to be? And blow his cover? And make this whole charade pointless? Doesn’t that make him incredibly short-sighted and stupid?” Yes, dear reader. Yes it does. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Hearne plays the entire situation as if Atticus the cleverest man alive.

2 This sounds counterintuitive, a book telling you that books are uncool. But it’s happened to me before: the book fantasy novel Fell (which is about talking wolves) has several Author Tracts about how using stories to teach lessons is harmful propaganda meant to enslave us and fairy tales are the opiates of the masses. Yes, really.

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Comment

  1. The Smith of Lies on 25 August 2020, 02:50 said:

    [takes a huge swig of apple juice]

    You know it is going to be good if Juracan needs to steel himself with apple juice before starting the article.

    Also you know it is gonna be good when Iron Druid is being discussed.

    So the second book of the Iron Druid Chronicles is titled Hexed and yes there is a sporking in development, hold on to your pants.

    I am possibly the only person who cares about it, but I am gonna wait patiently and keep checking I.I. to avoid missing it.

    “Wait a minute,” you might be saying. “Wouldn’t revealing that he’s memorized Shakespeare prove that he’s not the stupid stoner he’s pretending to be? And blow his cover? And make this whole charade pointless? Doesn’t that make him incredibly short-sighted and stupid?” Yes, dear reader. Yes it does. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Hearne plays the entire situation as if Atticus the cleverest man alive.

    Technically having memorized works of Shakepeare does not signify any kind of smarts, just lots of work put in. Still, not something one would expect from a stupid stoner persona.

    The Doylist, meta explanation is this: Hearne was a high school English teacher, and he thinks Shakespeare is cool, and since Atticus is the Coolest, Cleverest, and Sexiest of Men, he therefore must also love Shakespeare and know his works by heart. There’s no other reason.

    Also, Shakespear is considered part of “high culture” these days, so it is a chance to show that Atticus is cultured and sophisticated. Which goes hand in hand with rather obnoxious and condescending way the pop-culture references are written.

    Because again, there’s no in-story reason for his love of Shakespeare. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: for a character who is supposed to be the most Irish Irishman to ever Irish, Atticus doesn’t give two craps about Ireland or Irish culture.

    This would actually make a lot of sense. Atticus is 2000 years old and spend that time wandering the world. He has no real cultural background anymore, the culture he was raised in stopped existing gods know how long ago. He’d probably be a cultural amalgam, having soaked up bit here and there.

    But of course the narration does not reflect it and Atticus talks a lot about being an Irishmen who Irishes.

    He has an Irish bar he goes to all the time. He worships the Irish gods. He has an Irish wolfhound. His public persona is as a young Irish-American college-aged man. In essence, he has some tacked-on Irish traits that makes me suspect that we are supposed to think of him as a very Irish person. And yet his Irish identity is all surface-deep.

    Yup. Exactly what I meant above.

    One of the tie-in books has interviews with all of the characters, and Butler’s interview has him admit that he doesn’t actually like action movies, because they’re too much like his own real life. He prefers romantic comedies.

    Now that is pretty clever bit of characterization.

    This sounds counterintuitive, a book telling you that books are uncool. But it’s happened to me before: the book fantasy novel Fell (which is about talking wolves) has several Author Tracts about how using stories to teach lessons is harmful propaganda meant to enslave us and fairy tales are the opiates of the masses. Yes, really.

    Now if that isn’t the biggest example of “do as I say not as I do” that I’ve seen in years, I don’t know what is…

    But even closer to our backyard, we have talked about “nerdy books telling you that nerds are uncool” (including the Iron Druid) a lot. So no surprises that Atticus’s book implies books are uncool, it is par for the course.

    This isn’t good writing. This is pretty bad writing, actually. This is like having your Bad Boy leading man playing piano—a tacked-on trait to make someone feel smart. This is like putting quotes at the beginning of your book that have nothing to do with anything. This is like having your protagonist beat someone at checkers/chess in a few moves. It’s telling you that a character is smart without doing any of the work to show you.

    Would you say it is a… Perense?

  2. Juracan on 25 August 2020, 22:06 said:

    You know it is going to be good if Juracan needs to steel himself with apple juice before starting the article.

    Also you know it is gonna be good when Iron Druid is being discussed.

    Glad I can bring entertainment just by opening the article.

    Also I totes didn’t have enough juice today…

    I am possibly the only person who cares about it, but I am gonna wait patiently and keep checking I.I. to avoid missing it.

    That’s the spirit.

    Also, Shakespear is considered part of “high culture” these days, so it is a chance to show that Atticus is cultured and sophisticated. Which goes hand in hand with rather obnoxious and condescending way the pop-culture references are written.

    I am considering, for the first time, adding counts to the next sporking. And one of them will be a count titled ‘Better Than You’ in which Hearne tries to convince you that Atticus is better than the people around him/the reader.

    Him referencing Shakespeare will probably be in that count.

    This would actually make a lot of sense. Atticus is 2000 years old and spend that time wandering the world. He has no real cultural background anymore, the culture he was raised in stopped existing gods know how long ago. He’d probably be a cultural amalgam, having soaked up bit here and there.

    But of course the narration does not reflect it and Atticus talks a lot about being an Irishmen who Irishes.

    See, I’m kind of wondering why Hearne made him an Irish Druid to begin with? Hearne doesn’t seem very interested in Irish mythology or history, the way he kind of skims through it without much depth. If he’s not invested in doing anything with Atticus being Irish, why does he do it? Does he just.. like the idea of it? Is Hearne of Irish descent and so it makes a better self-insert? I don’t know.

    Now if that isn’t the biggest example of “do as I say not as I do” that I’ve seen in years, I don’t know what is…

    You can understand why I’ve never picked up this author ever again, huh?

    But even closer to our backyard, we have talked about “nerdy books telling you that nerds are uncool” (including the Iron Druid) a lot. So no surprises that Atticus’s book implies books are uncool, it is par for the course.

    It’s baffling? I get that it’s in part because nerd culture has only just become mainstream, and just about every popular movie mocked nerds, but considering how much of this has those same people as your audience… it’s weird. I feel like it’s become less common now, or maybe I’m just picking up better fiction.

    Atticus is bizarre though because he’s like the middle school class clown telling everyone that “Cool Kids Don’t Read or Do Anything Remotely Smart” and we’re supposed to think he’s cool??

    Would you say it is a… Perense?

    I don’t… understand.

  3. The Smith of Lies on 27 August 2020, 02:20 said:

    I don’t… understand.

    My fault for commenting while tired and being sloppy. It was supposed to be “Pretense” because the whole thing is pretentious.

    I am considering, for the first time, adding counts to the next sporking. And one of them will be a count titled ‘Better Than You’ in which Hearne tries to convince you that Atticus is better than the people around him/the reader.

    Something, something, over 9000. I don’t know what other counters you are considering, but I am willing to be this one will go up well into triple digits.

    If he’s not invested in doing anything with Atticus being Irish, why does he do it?

    Because Tuatha are underrepresented pantheon and using them gives him Hipster cred?

  4. Juracan on 27 August 2020, 21:44 said:

    My fault for commenting while tired and being sloppy. It was supposed to be “Pretense” because the whole thing is pretentious.

    It is VERY pretentious, but in the cheapest way. Not even in the obnoxious modern artist way.

    I don’t know what other counters you are considering, but I am willing to be this one will go up well into triple digits.

    It may. But then, the others might get pretty high as well.

    Hang on, let me get my notebook.

    The 6 counts are:

    -Better Than You

    -Make It Easy!

    -The Kids These Days

    -LAUGH, DAMNIT!

    -Didn’t Do Homework (Reference Fail)

    -Paranoia? What’s that?

    The Paranoia one could do with a different name though.

    Because Tuatha are underrepresented pantheon and using them gives him Hipster cred?

    Maybe. I mean, I picked up the book because I thought to myself, “I should read more about Irish mythology. Here’s a book that features it!” So maybe that’s the angle he’s going for??

  5. The Smith of Lies on 28 August 2020, 14:16 said:

    -Make It Easy!

    This one sparks joy. I know it is stolen from Obscurus Lupa, but the way it fits Atticus’s shenanigans so well juest speaks to me.

    The Paranoia one could do with a different name though.

    In the spirit of intertextuality and in-jokiness I suggest “You keep using that word.” as per the Princess Bride quote.

    Also, does “Kids these days” include obnoxious pop-culture references? Because those caused you some grief in the first spork.

  6. Juracan on 28 August 2020, 21:54 said:

    In the spirit of intertextuality and in-jokiness I suggest “You keep using that word.” as per the Princess Bride quote.

    It shall be considered.

    Also, does “Kids these days” include obnoxious pop-culture references? Because those caused you some grief in the first spork.

    It basically means any time Atticus tells a character or the audience that humans now talk a certain way, or do things a certain way, in an obnoxious condescending way as if we’re all idiots. Kind of like the way he does everything!

    So like when Morrigan mentions Mesopotamia, and Atticus is like, “Well they call it Iraq now,” or he tells Flidais, “Oh people don’t say ‘Vent their spleen, they say ‘go apeshit’ now!’

  7. Francois Tremblay on 2 September 2020, 19:35 said:

    Actually, I really like the idea of a book telling you why you shouldn’t read books. I’m definitely going to use that. But I should probably mention it’s satire.

  8. LoneWolf on 4 September 2020, 01:24 said:

    I like reading sporks, I’d certainly read a mockery of Atticus’ further ridiculous Mary Sure adventures.

  9. TMary on 28 December 2020, 15:13 said:

    In addition to thoughts on the last few chapters of the old spork (and first chapter of the new one), I also have thoughts on this article! I mean:

    [takes a huge swig of apple juice]

    Let’s talk about Atticus O’Sullivan’s taste in fiction.

    That’s just my kind of a hook. So here goes.

    “Wait a minute,” you might be saying. “Wouldn’t revealing that he’s memorized Shakespeare prove that he’s not the stupid stoner he’s pretending to be? And blow his cover? And make this whole charade pointless? Doesn’t that make him incredibly short-sighted and stupid?” Yes, dear reader. Yes it does. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Hearne plays the entire situation as if Atticus the cleverest man alive.

    …There’s another character I may need to drag in to comment on this bit. He has…thoughts.

    If the man cared about Irish literature or art, he’d be all over Oscar Wilde, or W.E.B. Yeats, or George Bernard Shaw, or James Joyce, or Pat O’Shea, or Bram Stoker, or Eoin Colfer, or Jonathan Swift, or Lord Dunsany, or Sheridan LeFanu.

    Or we could go even more Irish and have him reference poets who actually wrote in Irish! Now, my focus has become much more Scottish Gaelic over the last year, so I don’t really know any big Irish poet names he could go for, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. At least you could have him reference, say, the four great cycles of Irish mythology! Mention that he can recite those from memory, in the original Old Irish! Now you’ve got me sold.

    This is especially getting on my nerves because, as societies without a widespread written language, the Gaelic cultures of both Ireland and Scotland set a very high store on being able to recite things from memory in exactly the way they were told to you. That is how they transmitted history, mythology, stories, poetry and song, knowledge of every kind. Atticus, as a druid, should have done a fair amount of memorizing and reciting himself. And wouldn’t it be kind of nice if, even after two millenia, he still remembers the knowledge he was charged with keeping because he never allowed himself to forget?

    He has an Irish bar he goes to all the time. He worships the Irish gods. He has an Irish wolfhound. His public persona is as a young Irish-American college-aged man. In essence, he has some tacked-on Irish traits that makes me suspect that we are supposed to think of him as a very Irish person. And yet his Irish identity is all surface-deep.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, what Atticus makes me think of is more “extremely American American who finds out he’s one-twelfth Irish and decides to make that his identity in the most stereotypical way possible” than “Irish-American guy”.

    Honestly, if Atticus wasn’t Irish – if he was some random American schmo who got caught up in this fight between the Irish gods over Freagarthach – how much of the story or his character would really change? Heck, it’d probably be an improvement, since he wouldn’t have umpty-million superpowers to use instead of his brain.

    Or, or, here’s an idea: He’s a stupid American college kid who was actually descended from an ancient Irish druid who was the greatest of them all, and when he was finally slain Ireland lost her greatest champion. But the gods have a way to channel his powers into his descendants, and so when there’s a great schism in Tír na nÓg, they decide to infuse this dope with the powers of his ancestor and have him fight in the battle. Only there’s a problem. Both sides think they’re the rightful champions of Ireland, and both sides want to use him. Now he gets to be a super-powerful Irish druid, and a stupid frat boy who’s never seen a bad idea he didn’t say “Hold my beer” to. It could still be very stupid and irritating, but at least it would kind of make sense.

    It’s interesting, though:

    That’s why Atticus likes Shakespeare. Because it’s recognizable to everyone in the English-speaking world.

    Now, I’m not arguing that Shakespeare is probably one of the most famous writers to at least everyone who speaks English. But Oscar Wilde? Bram Stoker? James Joyce? Those are also all highly recognizable names, and it doesn’t take much effort to tack them on to a character and go, “Ha! See, he’s Irish! He likes The Importance of Being Earnest!” Even Atticus’s highly stereotypical surface-level Irishness fails to be consistent.

    And Hearne has no problem name-dropping mythological Irish figures and events as if everyone knows what he’s talking about, so why worry about whether people can recognize anything else?

    Have you ever read Artemis Fowl? The title character has a bodyguard named Butler. Big bloke, good with guns and martial arts. Very serious. One of the tie-in books has interviews with all of the characters, and Butler’s interview has him admit that he doesn’t actually like action movies, because they’re too much like his own real life. He prefers romantic comedies. Then he says if the interviewer tells anyone that he’ll hunt them down. Now that is a hidden depth, because it shows a side of the character we’ve never seen before, but it doesn’t contradict what we’ve already seen. In fact, it kind of makes sense that he prefers to keep his mind off of work when he’s trying to relax.

    Heartily agreed. loves Butler and Artemis Fowl and Eoin Colfer in general

    I think the problem here is that Atticus isn’t a character. He doesn’t even have motivations, let alone a consistent personality, so we have no idea what he would enjoy (although, from what I know about South Park…yeah, that sounds about right). Butler does have a very clearly-defined personality, and actually, when you think about it, rom-coms are right up his alley. Because at heart, Butler is a big softie; he cares deeply about Artemis, about his little sister Juliet, and about Holly and Root and even Mulch, and before Artemis started to listen to his own moral compass, Butler took on that role, much of the time.

    I think that’s where the distinction lies between “Hidden Depths” and “tacked-on character trait to seem Cool or Smart or Funny”. ‘Cause real people do tend to like (seemingly) wildly discrepant things. On any one day, you can find me listening (just for a very small selection) to Dragonforce, Enya, Earth, Wind & Fire, Julie Fowlis, Suda Keina, and Steel Pulse. It depends on my mood, what I’m doing, and which song has just popped in my head. I just went from (re)reading A Series of Unfortunate Events to Sense and Sensibility to the Emerald arc of Pokémon Adventures, next in my to-be-read pile is The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander (I never read The Chronicles of Prydain as a kid, and now’s as good a time as any), and after that I’m going to have a stab at Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. On just one of my bookshelves, you will find Order of the Stick, the Inkheart trilogy, Kahlil Gibran, The Wind in the Willows, A Raisin in the Sun, O. Henry, Marguerite Henry, Tintin (in Scots), James Herriot, Victor Hugo, and Eva Ibbotson, among others – and yes, I’ve read all those things, and enjoyed them all immensely. I honestly am not a big movie/TV show person, so my options there are more limited, but I cut my teeth on the Marx Brothers at the same time as the Disney classics, and I may be one of the few people on this planet who is equally fond of The Golden Girls and the Pokémon anime. What do all of those things have to do with each other? shrugs Not much. Honestly, a few of them don’t seem to fit with my general personality at first glance.

    So when I hear a character say they like, say, The Bangles and Debussy, or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Emily Dickinson, I can’t immediately go, “Oh, that doesn’t make sense” without really looking at the character, because I know what I’m like. People have different sides to their personalities, and different moods, and sometimes the same thing doesn’t match with every mood. But I think if you look at it critically, you’ll see a connection, however slight, between the things people like. I mean, for me personally, I’m a curious person, or I like to think I am. I like learning about things, so the more I expose myself to, the more I learn. Plus, I’m a writer and a musician. I can’t afford not to explore a new style of writing or music just because it’s not the sort of thing I “usually enjoy”. There might be something to be learned from it, even if it’s just, “Don’t do this, it’s annoying.” And it depends on my mood. Say in reading, there are days when I want to learn about a particular time period in history, there are days when I feel like reading introspective poetry, and there are days when I just want to turn my brain off and have a few yuks.

    But Atticus? He’s not a curious person, he’s proved that a hundred times over. He doesn’t seem particularly interested in any of the arts for their own sake, or for improving his own skill at any of them. He barely even has different moods; he switches between smug and blasé to irritated and blasé, and that’s about it. And he certainly can’t tell me what he likes about Shakespeare, which, to me, is a dead giveaway that this is a tacked-on character trait without much thought behind it. You see up there where Butler explains why he likes romantic comedies? I don’t think Atticus ever had a single line, however brief, explaining his love of the Bard. Is it the characters? The plots? The use of language and poetry? The ribald jokes? WHAT? I get that art is subjective and emotional and people often have a hard time pinpointing why they like something, but surely you should be able to point to something, Atty. It’s not that difficult to find at least one reason why you enjoy something.

    And that’s why this fails as a sign of Hidden Depths, more than anything: Atticus doesn’t have any depths, and he’s proved that in a hundred ways. He’s not introspective, he’s not curious, he’s not intellectual, he’s certainly not compassionate or sensitive or even especially emotional. There is nothing about him that makes me think he’d connect with a work of art for any other reason than the most super of ficial.

    Of course, on that level, it kind of makes sense. Because Shakespeare is generally recognized as Something Intelligent and Scholarly People Read, and if he wanted to pretend to be intelligent and scholarly and impress everyone with his learningz, it would make sense, from his point of view, to quote Shakespeare often in lieu of saying anything intelligent. But to memorize all the plays is a level of dedication to the façade I wouldn’t have thought him capable of. He certainly doesn’t work very hard at anything else.

    OK, that was much much longer than it needed to be. And much more rambling. I hope it made sense. And wasn’t annoying.

    He very explicitly does not read books about Irish mythology, despite being an ancient Irish pagan; he tells the audience in the first book that he had to Google Irish myths on Aenghus Og to see what people today thought about him.

    Now, if this were a better book, Hearne could have used this in a way that made sense. Let’s say Atticus, after a long time spent in other continents without any contact with Ireland at all, finally came to America and, feeling nostalgic for the old country, picked up a book based on Irish mythology/Irish paganism.

    And dropped it in disgust. “This isn’t what we were like at all,” he cried. “This is complete nonsense. Not just that, it’s actually offensive nonsense.”

    He tried another one, and realized that that one, too, was inaccurate to the point of being insulting. And so was the next one, the next one, and the next one. Finally, he lost his patience, chucked all the books out the window, and said he was never reading another book about Irish anything again, because the authors couldn’t be bothered to do their research. So it came as a huge surprise to him to find out that anybody could know anything about ancient Ireland that was actually true to life; he’d started believing that nobody knew anything about it any more.

    What I’m saying is, this version of Atticus read the Hounded series. But the point is, doesn’t that make a bit more sense than, “I just don’t read about Irish mythology ‘cause I don’t wanna”?

    I wouldn’t be surprised if he expressed disdain for the idea of reading, telling us that it’s uncool.

    I am genuinely surprised that he never did. It seemed to be right up his alley. He absolutely seems like the kind of guy who would tell you reading was boring, that it was pointless, and that there were better things to do with your time. You know, like this.

    …You know, that comparison seems more apt the longer I think about it. Anyway, moving on.

    But it’s happened to me before: the book fantasy novel Fell (which is about talking wolves)

    Oh, that sounds cool, maybe I’ll check it ou—

    has several Author Tracts about how using stories to teach lessons is harmful propaganda meant to enslave us and fairy tales are the opiates of the masses. Yes, really.

    That’s a new one on me. I’ve seen “protagonist of a 300-page fantasy novel thinks reading is Stewpid and never changes his opinion despite the fact that the whole book would have been a lot easier for him if he had ever bothered to read literally anything in his life”, and I thought that was pretty bad, but that one might top it.

    And this is a shame because there are so many cool things you can do with characterization and intertextuality. […]

    I had a little bit of fun with this myself, even: Starspirit’s absolute favorite Disney movie of all time is Lilo & Stitch. The story of a genetic experiment created only to destroy, finding a purpose and love among a “little, broken” family of his own? Oh yeah, he can get behind that. His love of Star Wars is for multiple reasons, the main one being that the theme (at least of the original trilogy) is that redemption is possible and love is stronger than hate, but also because he thinks the practical effects are amazing (he loves practical effects and knowing how they work), the characters play off each other well, and the music is incredible, have you heard John Williams? (He’s also a big classical music guy, and John Williams is definitely hearkening back to Beethoven and Holst.) Those are little things, but I tried to make them make sense for his character.

    But it’s not just about character: Sometimes intertextuality can immerse you in the time period and the setting of the novel/movie/TV series/what-have-you, remind you that, “Oh yeah, this is what people were interested in, in this place and this time.” Like, say, having an American in a book set in 1980 be excited about The Empire Strikes Back being released. A character in 1720s England has read Robinson Crusoe. A Scottish Highlander who’s become a grandmother by the 1970s is astounded by the work of Runrig, because they’re a band of young men who are making rock music in Scottish Gaelic, and she remembers that when she was a little girl, she was beaten in school for speaking that same language. (Er…just for an example.) My point is you can really ground your work that way, and only having characters reference pop culture that everyone’s going to recognize, because everyone’s heard of Shakespeare and South Park, is cheating, in a way.

    Or, if you want, you could show that a character doesn’t, whether through choice or circumstance, get much exposure to the pop culture of their day by having them only interested in things from at least a decade before they were born (not that I have any personal experience with that or anything…). Or you could show that they’re really plugged in to the here and now, but not greatly attached to the past, by having them constantly reference everything happening in their time, but not really be familiar with anything outside of it. I don’t know. Do something. But easy references that everyone will get is boring. It doesn’t tell me anything about the theme, or the character, or the time, or the setting. I would rather the author didn’t give me any pop cultural references at all.

    I’d not be surprised if as the series went on Hearne also decided that he’s also a world-class chess player who can defeat champions in three moves and understands mathematics better than Stephen Hawking.

    While we’re talking about Artemis Fowl

    This is like having your protagonist beat someone at checkers/chess in a few moves. It’s telling you that a character is smart without doing any of the work to show you.

    —I do have to say that sometimes Eoin Colfer could get a bit “telly-not-showy” with Artemis’s intelligence. Especially with music – there was one example of him composing an ending for Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, and I’m sorry, but it takes a little more than just intelligence to be able to compose music. But that’s okay, because Eoin Colfer more than made up for that by showing us Artemis’s intelligence through the plans he concocted and the technology he (often) constructed himself in order to make those plans work. That’s what Hearne’s lacking. I’d buy the Shakespeare thing if Atticus even at least had the sense to shut up with the police come to his door.

    Smith: I am possibly the only person who cares about it, but I am gonna wait patiently and keep checking I.I. to avoid missing it.

    Ooh, me too! Me too!

    Also, Shakespear is considered part of “high culture” these days, so it is a chance to show that Atticus is cultured and sophisticated. Which goes hand in hand with rather obnoxious and condescending way the pop-culture references are written.

    This is true. But it is somewhat undermined by the fact that Atticus occasionally amuses himself by giving wedgies to hapless paramedics. So…there’s that.

    I have nothing more to add here, except a hearty round of applause for that final dissection, especially:

    But hear me out: Hearne specifically made Atticus a fanboy of one of the most popular and talked about writers in the history of the English-speaking world, having him go so far as to memorize all of his work, which would take years of effort… and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just there to prove how his protagonist is Better Than You. Not to indicate how far this character will go to try to prove that he’s better than everyone else, like an actual character flaw; no, you’re supposed to read about this trait and be utterly in awe of this manly and witty specimen of a man.

    And we’re not. We’re just disgusted by this gross, monstrous character, and baffled by the author’s numerous attempts to tell us he’s an admirable man instead of the lecherous, violent sociopath he is.

    THIS.

    Also, re: counts, if you’re not already locked in with what you’re using, and if Atticus is as irritating about name-dropping Genghis Khan (and other historical figures he should never have known) as he was in the last book, may I suggest “KHAAAN!” for that very thing? Also the phrase “Stuper-powered Frackin’ Nitwit Expositi-adocious” popped in my head, which would be three counts for the price of one, but would have the unfortunate disadvantage of being three counts for the price of one, meaning you’d have to use it in three different scenarios and the count would be artificially inflated past what any of the three would be individually. But it is fun to say. Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. It humbles a protagonist who’s far too braggadocious! Stuper-powered Frackin’ Nitwit Expositi-adocious!

  10. Juracan on 29 December 2020, 22:36 said:

    In addition to thoughts on the last few chapters of the old spork (and first chapter of the new one), I also have thoughts on this article!

    Good to see you again, Mary!

    This is especially getting on my nerves because, as societies without a widespread written language, the Gaelic cultures of both Ireland and Scotland set a very high store on being able to recite things from memory in exactly the way they were told to you. That is how they transmitted history, mythology, stories, poetry and song, knowledge of every kind. Atticus, as a druid, should have done a fair amount of memorizing and reciting himself. And wouldn’t it be kind of nice if, even after two millenia, he still remembers the knowledge he was charged with keeping because he never allowed himself to forget?

    See, I like this idea, and it’d be cool if a modern day Druid made a point to memorize as much of the history of his people as he could, or could recite his own life story in the form of an epic. Instead we get… Atticus.

    Or, or, here’s an idea: He’s a stupid American college kid who was actually descended from an ancient Irish druid who was the greatest of them all, and when he was finally slain Ireland lost her greatest champion. But the gods have a way to channel his powers into his descendants, and so when there’s a great schism in Tír na nÓg, they decide to infuse this dope with the powers of his ancestor and have him fight in the battle. Only there’s a problem. Both sides think they’re the rightful champions of Ireland, and both sides want to use him. Now he gets to be a super-powerful Irish druid, and a stupid frat boy who’s never seen a bad idea he didn’t say “Hold my beer” to. It could still be very stupid and irritating, but at least it would kind of make sense.

    Look, that could easily be very dumb, but I also think it could be very good if it was done well. Obviously, I think this is beyond Hearne’s skill as a storyteller, but it would require a lot of character development on the part of the stupid American college kid. If over the course of the story he became less stupid, and actually learned to deal with all of his power and handle the gods trying to control him and humanity… this could be interesting!

    But I think I’m getting away from your point, which is that it would make more sense for the lead to be this character instead of Atticus, a two thousand-year-old Druid who acts nothing like it. And yes, you’re correct.

    Now, I’m not arguing that Shakespeare is probably one of the most famous writers to at least everyone who speaks English. But Oscar Wilde? Bram Stoker? James Joyce? Those are also all highly recognizable names, and it doesn’t take much effort to tack them on to a character and go, “Ha! See, he’s Irish! He likes The Importance of Being Earnest!” Even Atticus’s highly stereotypical surface-level Irishness fails to be consistent.

    Nah, Shakespeare’s more recognizable by a longshot. I can imagine a lot of people who know of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, but not necessarily remember a lot of what they’ve written. Compared to Shakespeare, which at least everyone KNOWS he wrote Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.

    And Hearne has no problem name-dropping mythological Irish figures and events as if everyone knows what he’s talking about, so why worry about whether people can recognize anything else?

    Look, I have no idea how he decided his approach to Irish mythology. At all. It baffles me. Are we supposed to know what he’s talking about or not? He can’t decide.

    Of course, on that level, it kind of makes sense. Because Shakespeare is generally recognized as Something Intelligent and Scholarly People Read, and if he wanted to pretend to be intelligent and scholarly and impress everyone with his learningz, it would make sense, from his point of view, to quote Shakespeare often in lieu of saying anything intelligent.

    I liked this entire bit you have in your comment about wildly varying taste in fiction, but this bit also made me think of this song.

    What I’m saying is, this version of Atticus read the Hounded series. But the point is, doesn’t that make a bit more sense than, “I just don’t read about Irish mythology ‘cause I don’t wanna”?

    Anything that puts an ounce of thought into characterizing Atticus makes more sense than what we’ve gotten so far.

    That’s a new one on me. I’ve seen “protagonist of a 300-page fantasy novel thinks reading is Stewpid and never changes his opinion despite the fact that the whole book would have been a lot easier for him if he had ever bothered to read literally anything in his life”, and I thought that was pretty bad, but that one might top it.

    If it makes you feel any better, the first book is miles ahead in terms of quality. Maybe the author just struggled to come up with anything for the sequel.

    Then again, I’m saying this about a book I read in high school, over a decade ago. [shrugs] Maybe go read and decide for yourself.

    I like your bit on intertextuality, but on this:

    But easy references that everyone will get is boring. It doesn’t tell me anything about the theme, or the character, or the time, or the setting. I would rather the author didn’t give me any pop cultural references at all.

    I have lamented that reference pools for characters in fiction, at least nerd characters, tend to be pretty small. Nerd characters often reference Star Trek and Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, but other than that? Maybe vague references to other really popular fantasy and science fiction properties. You don’t see that many nerds in fiction reading Dragonlance or The Expanse or something like that.

    Just a thought that bothers me sometimes.

    Also, re: counts, if you’re not already locked in with what you’re using, and if Atticus is as irritating about name-dropping Genghis Khan (and other historical figures he should never have known) as he was in the last book, may I suggest “KHAAAN!” for that very thing? Also the phrase “Stuper-powered Frackin’ Nitwit Expositi-adocious” popped in my head, which would be three counts for the price of one, but would have the unfortunate disadvantage of being three counts for the price of one, meaning you’d have to use it in three different scenarios and the count would be artificially inflated past what any of the three would be individually. But it is fun to say. Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. It humbles a protagonist who’s far too braggadocious! Stuper-powered Frackin’ Nitwit Expositi-adocious!

    These… will be filed under consideration.

  11. TMary on 30 December 2020, 21:12 said:

    Good to see you again, Mary!

    Good to be back! Hopefully I can stick around this time. I kind of blame… waves a hand at 2020 and life in general you know, that. So maybe it’ll get better?

    See, I like this idea, and it’d be cool if a modern day Druid made a point to memorize as much of the history of his people as he could, or could recite his own life story in the form of an epic.

    Ooh, ooh! The epic idea is really cool, namely because it follows in the footsteps of epic tales and poetry being extremely important to the Gaels (to the point where they kind of thought you were pathetic if you couldn’t extemporize verse), and it would just be so cool if he was trying to keep that tradition alive. (Although he was a druid, not a bard, which are two different roles in society, but he could still compose poetry, if for no other reason than, “Nobody else is going to do it.”) But…sighs

    Sidenote, I spent most of my time away learning Scottish Gaelic and studying Gaelic culture at the same time, and while it is Scottish, not Irish, and the two are not the same, the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland were similar enough that I’ve picked up a bit about Ireland, too. So I am more armed for the spork!

    Look, that could easily be very dumb, but I also think it could be very good if it was done well. Obviously, I think this is beyond Hearne’s skill as a storyteller, but it would require a lot of character development on the part of the stupid American college kid. If over the course of the story he became less stupid, and actually learned to deal with all of his power and handle the gods trying to control him and humanity… this could be interesting!

    Yeah, thinking about it, I think it could work if there was plenty of character development and it was clear we weren’t supposed to think this guy was the coolest guy ever. It might be kind of fun!

    But I think I’m getting away from your point, which is that it would make more sense for the lead to be this character instead of Atticus, a two thousand-year-old Druid who acts nothing like it. And yes, you’re correct.

    Yeah, he might still be irritating at first, but at least he’d have an excuse to act the way he does.

    Nah, Shakespeare’s more recognizable by a longshot. I can imagine a lot of people who know of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, but not necessarily remember a lot of what they’ve written. Compared to Shakespeare, which at least everyone KNOWS he wrote Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.

    Fair enough. My reference pool of people mainly consists of nerds, so it may not be exactly representative of the population at large.

    Look, I have no idea how he decided his approach to Irish mythology. At all. It baffles me. Are we supposed to know what he’s talking about or not? He can’t decide.

    Would it be fair to assume he went with “Whatever’s less work for me” as an approach? It seems like that’s the most likely explanation.

    I liked this entire bit you have in your comment about wildly varying taste in fiction, but this bit also made me think of this song.

    That is PERFECT.

    Then again, I’m saying this about a book I read in high school, over a decade ago. [shrugs] Maybe go read and decide for yourself.

    Maybe I will, just to be sure. You never know, sometimes your perception of a book from when you were younger is way off from what it is as an adult.

    I have lamented that reference pools for characters in fiction, at least nerd characters, tend to be pretty small. Nerd characters often reference Star Trek and Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, but other than that? Maybe vague references to other really popular fantasy and science fiction properties. You don’t see that many nerds in fiction reading Dragonlance or The Expanse or something like that.

    Just a thought that bothers me sometimes.

    No, I agree! I mean, I get that authors do want easy shorthand to say, “This guy’s a nerd”, and for sure, Star Wars and Star Trek and Lord of the Rings are really popular and easily recognizable. But it also feels really…inauthentic? Like, if a “nerd” character in a book I was reading dropped the title of a book or show I’d never heard about, and then raved about how it was the best book in existence, or ranted about how the show USED to be good, but then around Season 3 they introduced this new character who served no function other than to be the protagonist’s love interest, and the protag started acting stupid whenever they were in the room, that would feel much more like the nerds I know. I would recognize that way of talking, if not the actual work.1

    Or even if they just made references to it, and then everyone around them looked vaguely confused and wondered what they were talking about. I’ve been there. It might give me something new to check out!

    But when it’s only stuff even non-nerds enjoy and recognize, it feels like the author themself (…ves? I dunno, it never sounds right either way) has a very shallow reference pool to draw from, and so they’re just going with that because, eh, everybody gets it.

    These… will be filed under consideration.

    Do with them what you will.

    1 Although I do get how this could garner an author a lot of hate, if not done very carefully, but at least it would be real. And I think I could take a character stating an opinion I don’t agree with if it felt real, and just that character’s opinion, rather than the Right Way of Seeing This Thing.