I looked at the calendar today, and I thought I’d do something different.
After careful contemplation, I have come to the realization that I’ve been wrong this whole time: The Iron Druid Chronicles is a modern literary masterpiece, created by an author of unparalleled talent. I know, I know–after all this time, and all of these sporking chapters, it seems like an odd thing for me to say, but I truly think we should reverse our opinions on this book series.
Here, let me explain:
I have often complained that Atticus is, as a protagonist, unrelatable, unlikable, and unfunny. And that is all true at first, second, and third glances–until I discovered that I’d been looking at this character incorrectly. Atticus O’Sullivan is actually a clever deconstruction of expectations for what a good urban fantasy protagonist is supposed to be. Heck, he even subverts expectations for readers that aren’t familiar with urban fantasy! For instance, he and the characters around him are constantly spouting how clever and paranoid Atticus is, and he never exhibits either of those traits throughout the story! What a clever subversion! You didn’t expect him to be that useless, did you?
In writing Atticus as a character, Hearne decided to write an immortal, magically-powerful character; yet, knowing that readers would likely be bored with inconsequential trivia like a detailed history, and instead he built a protagonist who talks not like an aged trickster who relies on his smarts, but a shallow impression of a modern frat guy. Why use wit when you can have pop culture references? Why flesh out a coherent backstory when you can have him namedrop historical figures that you’re bound to have heard of? That’s more relatable than some immortal wizard character might be, and the reader isn’t expected to know or learn anything when reading the protagonist’s narration.
It might be easy for us to dismiss Atticus as an author insert, wish fulfillment character. At this, though, I would remind you that Kevin Hearne later co-wrote Kill the Farm Boy with Delilah Dawson with the explicit purpose of using parody to deconstruct how fantasy was often a white male power fantasy. Obviously, then, Hearne’s best-selling fantasy series with an incredibly powerful white male as the lead can’t be a white male power fantasy! So even though Atticus is immortal, super strong, has healing powers, is immune to most forms of magic, is constantly shilled as intelligent by the characters around him, owns a successful business despite rarely actually working in it, lives in a suburban house, has enough money to be able to throw away tens of thousands of dollars at the drop of a hat, regularly has sex with/is propositioned by goddesses, has a super hot college graduate apprentice who he’ll get to sleep with in the later books, has a dog he can talk to, has a team of expensive lawyers on standby, carries a magic sword that can cut through anything, goes against villains who the supporting characters agree are all dumber than himself, is explicitly a better swordsman than heroes out of mythology, kills gods, and espouses the same views on religion, education, and society that the author does–even with all of that, I think that it would be a little silly to suggest that Atticus is only Hearne’s way of living out his fantasies.
Maybe I’ve said that Atticus isn’t relatable before, but that was before I realized that Hearne intuitively realized what many of us, including myself, miss: that deep down, we’re all massive douchebags who would happily be like Atticus given the chance! Hearne is an incredibly intuitive author that way, you know? So insightful of the human character, he’s almost like Shakespeare!
Thinking back, I’ve talked a lot about how Hearne objectifies female characters in the books, and I think I was completely off the mark. When Hearne, through Atticus, gives a long, detailed description of a female character, what she looks like and what she’s wearing, while only giving cursory and bland descriptions of male characters, it’s not because we’re meant to drool over an attractive woman! That’s a test for the reader. That’s not the text or the narration objectifying women: that’s YOU. Hearne wouldn’t put blatant fanservice again and again and again and again and again in the novel if there wasn’t a deep literary reason, like testing to see if readers would see their true, deep personalities underneath.
I’ve complained about how the Widow MacDonagh speaks with a parody of an accent, as if she were a cereal mascot, hence almost always referring to her as “the Leprechaun.” Now I realize that it’s a subtle part of her characterization and way to reveal backstory. If she wasn’t a little old lady with an over-the-top Irish accent, a drinking problem, hatred of the British, and connections to the IRA, would readers even know that she’s Irish? Probably not. I mean, sure, her name is “MacDonagh,” but you can’t expect people to pay attention to things like names, or subtle references to develop characters–not when you can use stereotypes instead! That’s how we make sense of each other, by using stereotypes.
When it comes to worldbuilding, Hearne realized that only nerds care about that stuff, and if we learned anything from Iron Druid Chronicles, it’s that nerds are lame! All that stuff is going to get in the way of the cool parts, like women throwing themselves at Atticus, or him killing gods in half a page, or becoming unkillable in the second chapter of the first book. It’s much simpler to just copy things from pop culture, such as werewolves and vampires, without bothering to elaborate, or an entire mythology system from something like American Gods without the thematic reasons why that system is included in that book.
So why bother researching Irish mythology to write this book about an ancient Irish Druid interacting with Irish gods? This is all leading up to the book where he fights Norse gods anyway! The only reason the main character is an Irish Druid in the first place was because Hearne wanted a character who could talk to his dog.
It doesn’t matter that Flidais wasn’t really a huntress goddess in the source materials. Heck, the actual texts we have that mention Flidais don’t even indicate that she’s a goddess at all. But who needs that! You can just Google mythological figures from Irish or Slavic folklore, and whatever random New Age site that pops up can be your reference point! And, for bonus credit, you can condescendingly tell the audience that you know better than they do what you’re talking about every opportunity you get! What are they going to do, correct you? Tell me that American Gods is not a scholarly source? Nerds! The book’s already been published! Neener neener, in the words of literary genius Kevin Hearne.
Hearne understands that the key to humor isn’t wit; if you have to think about a joke, or anything at all, then he’s not having fun, and then you’re not having fun. To that end, he employs solid use of juvenile pranks, profanity, and pop culture references. Everyone understands those, and they know those are funny, right? I criticized him in the past for these stupid jokes; now I know that I was just being too high brow. And one shouldn’t worry about pop culture references being dated–no one reads old books, anyway, right? That’s for nerds!
Except Shakespeare. You should have that memorized. In fact, when quoting Shakespeare, in prose or in life, you should do your best to explain the quote’s source and what it means, as to educate people. At least, what you learned it meant in high school; no need to do a deeper dive.
We’ve piled on how the line, “Bring it, mothafuckas. Bring it.” sounds immensely stupid, and Atticus’s assertion that it’s how modern people would express the same feelings as Shakespeare’s Hamlet in modern English is dumb. You know what, though? If we apply some thought, however, it’s still… immensely stupid. But you didn’t expect something that immensely stupid! So Hearne is challenging your expectations as only a brilliant writer would!
I think if there’s one word we can use to approach Iron Druid Chronicles, it’s “deconstruction.” The books deconstruct our approach to not just urban fantasy, but fantasy and action literature in general by shifting around our expectations. You’d expect a protagonist to be proactive and make his own decisions; Atticus goes around his ordinary day like nothing’s wrong, only interacting with the Plot when someone makes him. You’d expect an immortal character to have an interesting and unique point of view; Atticus instead talks like a very annoying, sex-obsessed, college-aged douchebag, even in his inner monologue. You’d think that a paranoid individual would make preparations and have plans for everything; Atticus is surprised by everything, even when people he claims he doesn’t trust betray him, and gets by anyway by virtue of being more powerful than anyone else. Villains are generally threatening with cunning plans; this one is a raving lunatic with no coherent character and plots to make himself impotent. You’d expect a magic user who is tied to the Earth and considers his sacred duty to protect it would care about healing it after the Hell-blight caused in the final battle; nope! Atticus bought his dog some poodles to have sex with.
Surely Kevin Hearne, who worked as a high school English teacher, knows exactly what he’s doing! The sheer number of switches that the author makes regarding expectations, playing with Plot and character, leads me to believe that he’s must have a plan here that we were too blind to see before I took a really good look at what the text is about. This isn’t incompetent writing! This is literary brilliance made manifest! This is the shining height of what urban fantasy can be! Truly, this is a mangum opus that defines our generation! Why else would these books be so popular? Why else would they regularly get great reviews on Goodreads from genre giants such as Patrick Rothfuss?
The Iron Druid Chronicles are masterpieces; there can be no other explanation.
8-1-16-16-25 1-16-18-9-12 6-15-15-12-19 4-1-25
[Regular sporking will continue soon (hopefully).]
Aikaterini on 1 April 2024, 18:45 said:
Happy April Fool’s Day! :)
Ah, yes, deconstruction, the catch-all excuse for when a character or story is awful. “Oh, no, I wrote it badly on purpose.”
Have I mentioned how much I dislike that mindset? “Oh, this character is too much of a do-gooder, nobody is that nice in real life! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to write a completely selfish jerk who’s rude and abrasive to everybody he meets, but isn’t he so relatable, guys?”
The sad part is that I’ve actually come across anime and videogame fans who use that same logic when trying to excuse the obnoxiously sexualized female character who’s only like that for fanservice.
…Because the only fictional characters who can talk to dogs are…Irish Druids?
Juracan on 3 April 2024, 06:32 said:
I was half-scared no one would get it. Thanks for saying this right off the bat.
“I meant to do that!” Always the best thing to say after you fall over.
I always flashback to a post on the Inheritance Forums in the early 2000’s where some user, tired of typical epic fantasy, said something like, “I’m going to write a dark fantasy story where the protagonist commits war crimes and everyone’s an absolute bastard!” And the description was just so unpleasant I didn’t understand what the appeal was. Yeah, of course, writing characters as flawless moral paragons can be difficult to make compelling, but the opposite? Where the protagonist is just constantly garbage, and it’s treated like that’s just how people are? That’s worse.
The only way I think we’re meant to relate to this guy is that we wish we were like him, I guess? Which is dumb because, again, he’s pretty annoying. I really don’t get this guy’s appeal.
Yuuuuup.
Apparently?!? I don’t know, man.
It’s like he figured the only way to write a mage who talked to animals was a druid. Which doesn’t make sense; it seems more like he Google’d the DnD manual of magic users and went with that, which would explain A LOT about how he depicts druids, I think.
Brooklyn on 3 April 2024, 08:18 said:
Parody would’ve worked better as an excuse. Deconstruction demands some quality. In parody the lack of quality is intentional, sometimes.
But what will you do in 2025? Say Gloria Teach or the Angelopolis lady are great authors?
Ps. Happy April fool’s day! Did you know that there was once a rabbi—or maybe it was the US government, I forget—who went to a criminal (Meyer Lansky, who was pretty high up in Murder, Incorporated) for help breaking up Nazi rallies? He didn’t even accept money for the job.
I’m pretty sure he did a very good job. He didn’t even kill anyone, as he was instructed to.
Oh, oops. That one’s real. (Listen, I’m doing a report on Jewish gangsters. My head is full of those sorts of facts.)
Juracan on 6 April 2024, 09:29 said:
Yes, but I think that some fans might actually try to use ‘parody’ as an excuse for this book’s take on… everything.
I don’t know; I don’t usually do an April Fool’s Day post, but it had been a while and I wanted to keep things running. Gloria Tesch is a bit out of my wheelhouse, so Angelopolis is more likely of those two. I haven’t written about it in a while…
I did not know this! But that’s an interesting subject for a report. Please let me know how it goes in the long-run!