Dragaera (Journaling January)
Jan. 19th, 2019 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitMy prompt from hamsterwoman was "Dragaera," and I was supposed to post about it on the 17th. Sorry I'm late. (If there was a 34th of January, I would have pushed it back till then, but alas.)
Have you ever encountered a canon that really drew you in and held your interest over several years? One that stacked up the tropes/character types/plot twists you like into a big pile of enjoyable action?
One that you couldn't for the life of you figure out why there just isn't a fandom?
That's Dragaera.
The Dragaera novels take place in a fantasy world with sci-fi underpinnings (it's heavily implied to be a human-colonised planet) and three main sapient species.
Dragaerans are tall, generally frail of build, live for hundreds or thousands of years, and often have pointed ears. In the Empire, where most of the stories take place, Dragaerans are divided into 17 Houses with different traits and values.
Easterners are shorter, have lifespans generally equivalent to ours, and have some direct cultural counterparts with Earth nationalities. Some have psychic or magical abilities.
Serioli are the native sapient species of the world; they're shorter than Easterners, mostly solitary, and don't interact much with either of the other species.
The longest series under the Dragaera umbrella, and currently unfinished (we're three books away!) is generally known as the 'Vlad books' or 'Vlad Taltos series'; the first book is Jhereg. The main character, Vlad Taltos, is a hitman for the organised crime assocation known as the Jhereg. As an Easterner living in the Empire, Vlad is a second-class citizen - in fact, he's only a citizen at all because his father spent a ridiculous amount of money buying a Jhereg title - and he has a chip on his shoulder the size of a mountain. He becomes an assassin because it lets him vent his hatred, and he works his way up the Jhereg ladder until he's the crime boss of a sizeable territory.
Things begin to change when his wife joins a rebel organisation and begins questioning both the Empire and the Jhereg. Vlad has to confront his own prejudices, and eventually violate his principles, which starts him down a new path. At the current point of the series, Vlad has been on the run from the Jhereg for almost two years, and is trying desperately to find a way to appease them so that he can live a normal life again.
The other series under the Dragaera umbrella is a series of five (or three) books known as the 'Khaavren Romances' or 'the Paarfiad'; the first book is The Phoenix Guards. Set a thousand years before Vlad's birth, they detail the Musketeer-esque adventures of a group of characters during the period of the Empire's Interregnum. They're delightful fun, with lots of swashbuckling, fancy prose, and a narrator, Paarfi, who's a character in his own right (there are 'interviews' with him and Brust sniping at each other!) Since the characters are Dragaerans and thus have long lifespans, some of them are still around to show up as minor characters in the Vlad books.
Beyond the two series, there's also a standalone novel, Brokedown Palace, set in a kingdom of Easterners, and some short stories.
With that out of the way, on to the specifics! I mentioned that this series if a perpetual case of "why isn't there any active fandom!?" for me, and at risk of repeating myself, I really don't understand why there isn't a fandom for this!
It seems to be absolutely stuffed with tropes that fandom loves: the wisecracking Vlad and his talking animal sidekick, the anti-hero with a heart/slow reformation of Vlad's character from amoral assassin to something more principled (though I don't think Vlad's morality will never be "normal," and that's a point of appeal as well!), the Dragaeran culture that makes Vlad an outsider and an underdog, the amazing descriptions of food that will leave you hungry after reading... :D There are 17 Houses for all your Sorting needs, and a gender-neutral society that means female characters can do anything the male ones can. There's plenty of opportunities for angst around Dragaeran prejudices (the Houseless, inter-House romances or the offspring thereof, Dragaeran/Easterner conflict, bias against the Jhereg and Teckla Houses...) and a wide-open playground of unexplored regions where Dragaeran prejudices don't apply (the East, the Isles).
There are plenty of options when it comes to relationships, too, whether you're into Vlad and his wife Cawti struggling through the breakup of their marriage, or Vlad's intense foe-yay with his Dragaeran friend-and-sometimes-boss, or the deep loyalty between Vlad and his secretary Kragar, or Cawti building a new life with her (female, Dragaeran) former assassination partner Norathar. The Khaavren romances feature two forbidden inter-House loves in addition to a successful romantic pairing.
If you've read them, talk at me about them! If you have questions, hit me with them - I am always willing to pimp this series to people to see if I can't build a little fandom for it. :D
hamsterwoman was "Dragaera," and I was supposed to post about it on the 17th. Sorry I'm late. (If there was a 34th of January, I would have pushed it back till then, but alas.)Have you ever encountered a canon that really drew you in and held your interest over several years? One that stacked up the tropes/character types/plot twists you like into a big pile of enjoyable action?
One that you couldn't for the life of you figure out why there just isn't a fandom?
That's Dragaera.
The Dragaera novels take place in a fantasy world with sci-fi underpinnings (it's heavily implied to be a human-colonised planet) and three main sapient species.
Dragaerans are tall, generally frail of build, live for hundreds or thousands of years, and often have pointed ears. In the Empire, where most of the stories take place, Dragaerans are divided into 17 Houses with different traits and values.
Easterners are shorter, have lifespans generally equivalent to ours, and have some direct cultural counterparts with Earth nationalities. Some have psychic or magical abilities.
Serioli are the native sapient species of the world; they're shorter than Easterners, mostly solitary, and don't interact much with either of the other species.
The longest series under the Dragaera umbrella, and currently unfinished (we're three books away!) is generally known as the 'Vlad books' or 'Vlad Taltos series'; the first book is Jhereg. The main character, Vlad Taltos, is a hitman for the organised crime assocation known as the Jhereg. As an Easterner living in the Empire, Vlad is a second-class citizen - in fact, he's only a citizen at all because his father spent a ridiculous amount of money buying a Jhereg title - and he has a chip on his shoulder the size of a mountain. He becomes an assassin because it lets him vent his hatred, and he works his way up the Jhereg ladder until he's the crime boss of a sizeable territory.
Things begin to change when his wife joins a rebel organisation and begins questioning both the Empire and the Jhereg. Vlad has to confront his own prejudices, and eventually violate his principles, which starts him down a new path. At the current point of the series, Vlad has been on the run from the Jhereg for almost two years, and is trying desperately to find a way to appease them so that he can live a normal life again.
The other series under the Dragaera umbrella is a series of five (or three) books known as the 'Khaavren Romances' or 'the Paarfiad'; the first book is The Phoenix Guards. Set a thousand years before Vlad's birth, they detail the Musketeer-esque adventures of a group of characters during the period of the Empire's Interregnum. They're delightful fun, with lots of swashbuckling, fancy prose, and a narrator, Paarfi, who's a character in his own right (there are 'interviews' with him and Brust sniping at each other!) Since the characters are Dragaerans and thus have long lifespans, some of them are still around to show up as minor characters in the Vlad books.
Beyond the two series, there's also a standalone novel, Brokedown Palace, set in a kingdom of Easterners, and some short stories.
With that out of the way, on to the specifics! I mentioned that this series if a perpetual case of "why isn't there any active fandom!?" for me, and at risk of repeating myself, I really don't understand why there isn't a fandom for this!
It seems to be absolutely stuffed with tropes that fandom loves: the wisecracking Vlad and his talking animal sidekick, the anti-hero with a heart/slow reformation of Vlad's character from amoral assassin to something more principled (though I don't think Vlad's morality will never be "normal," and that's a point of appeal as well!), the Dragaeran culture that makes Vlad an outsider and an underdog, the amazing descriptions of food that will leave you hungry after reading... :D There are 17 Houses for all your Sorting needs, and a gender-neutral society that means female characters can do anything the male ones can. There's plenty of opportunities for angst around Dragaeran prejudices (the Houseless, inter-House romances or the offspring thereof, Dragaeran/Easterner conflict, bias against the Jhereg and Teckla Houses...) and a wide-open playground of unexplored regions where Dragaeran prejudices don't apply (the East, the Isles).
There are plenty of options when it comes to relationships, too, whether you're into Vlad and his wife Cawti struggling through the breakup of their marriage, or Vlad's intense foe-yay with his Dragaeran friend-and-sometimes-boss, or the deep loyalty between Vlad and his secretary Kragar, or Cawti building a new life with her (female, Dragaeran) former assassination partner Norathar. The Khaavren romances feature two forbidden inter-House loves in addition to a successful romantic pairing.
If you've read them, talk at me about them! If you have questions, hit me with them - I am always willing to pimp this series to people to see if I can't build a little fandom for it. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-01-21 01:26 am (UTC)Oh hey, I somehow missed this on my flist, or DW didn't show it to me properly or something -- hilariously, I actually found this post by plugging "dragaera" into DW's Journal Search, as I do every once in a while
or possibly every weekin the hopes of finding like-minded fans :P(If there was a 34th of January, I would have pushed it back till then, but alas.)
Heh! I suppose one could recalculate January dates on the basis of a 30-hour day and post on the 17th 30-hour day? (roughly the 21st, I guess)
One that you couldn't for the life of you figure out why there just isn't a fandom?
Chronicles of Amber was my first experience like this, and I'm still baffled, but at least that's a closed fandom, and people did LARPs and played role-playing games with it back in the day I gather? (Which, I've seen evidence of some Dragaera LARPs, too, but it would be really nice if there was some non-geographically-constrained way to participate in this fandom.)
is a series of five (or three) books
:D
There are 17 Houses for all your Sorting needs, and a gender-neutral society
I hit the peak of my Dragaera obsession (with Iorich, I think?) at a time when I was also very active in a landcomm for a different (i.e. existent) fandom, and it occurred to me what a great fit Dragaera would be for a landcomm style competition, because the house in chrage is genuinly supposed to change every so often (in a fixed order, but that's details). I did, at least, manage to draw some people into sorting characters into Dragaeran houses with me, with the results iconised here. And apparently I made up a Dragaera fandom meme, too? XP I have no memory of this place, but it also doesn't surprise me that I was essentially attempting to create a solitary fandom experience XP Complete with dollmaker characters (Dragaera ponies) and a university AU headcanons stashed somewhere XP
I hope this post lures out some fans, or generates some new ones!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-21 08:29 pm (UTC)Do you also make up OCs in this universe? I totally do - I can't help it, there's such a broad playing field! - and while I'll probably never finish (much less post) their stories, I still enjoy noodling around with them and wondering whether other people also feel the lure to mess with Brust's delightful universe. :D
I remain incredibly jealous of Dragaera for having 30-hour day. :P
no subject
Date: 2019-01-23 05:38 am (UTC)I remain incredibly jealous of Dragaera for having 30-hour day. :P
No kidding! Having 25% more day would be really nice!
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Date: 2019-01-27 06:30 am (UTC)it's full of people who would be up for any ill-advised adventure, for various reasons
Oh, my. Now I desperately need fic of Tazendra drinking and fighting her way across the multiverse! She would absolutely, totally be up for any kind of ill-advised adventure and would charge right through any necromantic window offered if told there were sufficient enemies on the other side. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-01-27 07:54 pm (UTC)And, haha, I wasn't even thinking about Tazendra, but you are so right -- if anyone was ever up for an ill-advised adventure, so long as it was ill-advised ENOUGH, she would always be happy to leap through a necromantic window. Especially if she had some good friends at her side. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 12:37 am (UTC)Now I want a fix-it AU where the Necromancer or someone sends Tazendra through a window to another plane to save her life after her Jenoine battle. (Aerich leaps in right after her, naturally.)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 02:57 pm (UTC)There are several good starting points for the series, but Jhereg was the first written and I feel that it makes a good entry point, because it has most of the explanations worked in (as first books tend to do - albeit with a few things that later got tweaked a bit, as also tends to happen with first books). :D