Fic: Reunion

[osprey_archer]

Oh! I wrote a fic! asakiyume asked for a fic about Martha and Ivy from The Changeling, a wonderful book by Zilpha Keatley Snyder - possibly my favorite book by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, although I've loved an awful lot of her books. The book is centered around best friends Martha and Ivy and their imaginative games and it is one of the best renderings of imaginative childhood that I've ever read, ever, so as you might expect it's taken me a while to write the fic about it because I wanted to do the source material justice.

But at last I've finished it! And here it is.

Title: Reunion
Fandom: The Changeling, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Rating: G
Summary: After years apart, Martha and Ivy reunite in New York City.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

In my case I think it was partly that I had too much time to built it up in my head: the library only had the first two books so I had to wait ages till I could read the third, and of course it's hard for any book to live up to that kind of build up. (Although I think in any case I would have been disappointed that there's less Teera & Pomma in the third book. I liked everyone in those books, but they were my favorites!)

And yes, I agree with you about the Big Death. (I don't think anyone else is reading this, but just in case: Spoilers hereafter!)

It might tide them over in the short term, and they don't seem to have the technology to manufacture guns (or whatever the weapon Raamo carried into the abyss was: IIRC it burned the woman who was carrying it somehow, as if it held some corrosive chemical, which doesn't sound very gunlike). But that doesn't mean that they're not going to start beating each other with sticks at some point in the future.

I think there's meant to be some Christ-figure symbolism in Raamo's death, but it doesn't really come together. Slipping and falling into an abyss just isn't a martyrdom in the same way as a violent death at human hands, you know? (Even if he's sort of killed by the malevolent strength of the tool-of-violence itself: "Its power still lived and took strength from the minds and Spirits behind him that had not yet denied it. A numbing indecision gripped him, making the urn seem to cling to his hands. He struggled to release it; and in the struggle, he slipped forward and plunged over the precipice.")

But then the theological underpinnings (or maybe "the underlying beliefs about human nature" expresses it better?) in Greensky are quite different from traditional Christianity: the whole experiment was an attempt to escape original sin, to show that our natures are truly good, at least in the right environment.

I go back and forth about what I think ZKS's conclusions were in that trilogy, and whether I think she was right. The books are good material for thinking with. And who could read them and not want to fly with a shuba?

[asakiyume]

My impression was that the main thematic conflict was between the notion that innocence/lack of knowledge is the only way to achieve a peaceful state on the one hand, and, contrariwise, knowledge/remembrance being the only way to prevent the mistakes of the past. The ones in favor of innocence were so committed to that view point that they were willing to separate out people and imprison them--and that caused the spirit waning.

She seems to be arguing against the old Blake-ian Innocence v. Experience thing, which I appreciate.

But a person might argue that the problem was that they retained a secret privileged class who knew about the evils of their forebears. Maybe if all that knowledge had truly died, things would have been different. ... I doubt she herself felt that, though. And, that wouldn't solve the problem of irreconcilable differences of opinion about fundamental matters.

[osprey_archer]

I always liked the fact that Raamo's people were called the Kindar - like in kindergarten: children. It's not exactly subtle but sometimes subtlety is overrated, anyway.

But actually one of the things that I like about Greensky is that it is pretty subtle, especially compared to many modern-day teen dystopias. Of course, it's not a full-blown dystopia; it's a utopia that's slowly rotting because of the secrecy and privilege of the Ol-zhaan, but there are also parts of the society worth saving.