I got Dealing with Dragons, the source of my pseud, for my 7th birthday. It was an advance copy from a family friend who worked for the distributor and knew that my mom was a big fan of the series. Dealing is a prequel to the earlier Talking to Dragons, which my mom read aloud to me on an airplane flight when I was 3. (I have strong but fuzzy memories of the enchantment of my first encounter with this verse, and it's pretty mind-blowing to realize they originated at age 3.)
I had actually already heard an excerpt because Patricia C Wrede was a guest at a convention in Boston - I think my mom said Worldcon - which we attended when I was 5, and the manuscript was still in progress. My mom took me to a reading - it was the scene where Cimorene's ex-fiance appears at the dragons' cave to 'rescue' her while she is tidying the store rooms, resulting in the accidental discovery of the djinn. My mom says I laughed out loud a lot and after the reading, in response to her apology, Wrede told her it was flattering. (I remember the reading but not the conversation. I guess it was boring adult stuff to me.)
From then until MammothFail Dealing with Dragons was my favorite book. I reread it more frequently than any other for comfort right up until then, too. My original hardback copy is worn and the cloth part of the binding has splits and loose threads, but none of the pages have fallen out yet.1
I always wanted to be Cimorene. As a kid it was my favorite game. I was thinking about this because![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefourthvine tweeted about the earthling demanding the book of The Princess Who Saved Herself, which reminded me of that one dad who repainted the pixels in some Nintendo game so his daughter could play as Princess Peach and rescue Mario. And that reminded me of the reason I didn't see Star Wars until I was about 18.
When I was a kid the younger boy down the street always wanted to play Star Wars, which he'd seen and I hadn't (well, mostly because whenever I caught bits in con movie rooms I made my dad leave with me because I thought they were boring, but I don't think I'd ever seen Leia).
He would be Luke and his baby brother would be Han, and I got to be Princess Leia by the Laws of Gender. But when I asked him what I was supposed to do as we were running around the yard - mostly he was shouting at his brother and the imaginary storm troopers - he told me he guessed just scream sometimes (inaccurately, as I didn't learn for another 8 years or so). I made a complaint about the unexcitingness of this role at the next pause in the action - in retrospect I guess we must have been in an imaginary garbage compactor - and he explained that there just weren't any other girls. And thus began a long period of hating Star Wars and refusing to watch it.
There aren't that many things in pop culture that I can think of that could even be described as 'the princess who saved herself'. Obviously. As a kid the story that struck me as most similar to Cimorene's was the Buddha's, so... yeah.
1. I don't think the book itself is racist - maybe because the djinn is the only time it even tangentially comes up - but I haven't managed to [re]read anything by Wrede or Bujold since without getting uncomfortable. (Or McKinley, since the 'Obama isn't black because he looks like a white guy with a tan' remark, or Moon, since that classism-not-racism fiasco: giant bummer, having three of my top 6 or so childhood favorites spoiled in such a short time like that. Fortunately I know no ill of DWJ's public conduct).
I had actually already heard an excerpt because Patricia C Wrede was a guest at a convention in Boston - I think my mom said Worldcon - which we attended when I was 5, and the manuscript was still in progress. My mom took me to a reading - it was the scene where Cimorene's ex-fiance appears at the dragons' cave to 'rescue' her while she is tidying the store rooms, resulting in the accidental discovery of the djinn. My mom says I laughed out loud a lot and after the reading, in response to her apology, Wrede told her it was flattering. (I remember the reading but not the conversation. I guess it was boring adult stuff to me.)
From then until MammothFail Dealing with Dragons was my favorite book. I reread it more frequently than any other for comfort right up until then, too. My original hardback copy is worn and the cloth part of the binding has splits and loose threads, but none of the pages have fallen out yet.1
I always wanted to be Cimorene. As a kid it was my favorite game. I was thinking about this because
thefourthvine tweeted about the earthling demanding the book of The Princess Who Saved Herself, which reminded me of that one dad who repainted the pixels in some Nintendo game so his daughter could play as Princess Peach and rescue Mario. And that reminded me of the reason I didn't see Star Wars until I was about 18. When I was a kid the younger boy down the street always wanted to play Star Wars, which he'd seen and I hadn't (well, mostly because whenever I caught bits in con movie rooms I made my dad leave with me because I thought they were boring, but I don't think I'd ever seen Leia).
He would be Luke and his baby brother would be Han, and I got to be Princess Leia by the Laws of Gender. But when I asked him what I was supposed to do as we were running around the yard - mostly he was shouting at his brother and the imaginary storm troopers - he told me he guessed just scream sometimes (inaccurately, as I didn't learn for another 8 years or so). I made a complaint about the unexcitingness of this role at the next pause in the action - in retrospect I guess we must have been in an imaginary garbage compactor - and he explained that there just weren't any other girls. And thus began a long period of hating Star Wars and refusing to watch it.
There aren't that many things in pop culture that I can think of that could even be described as 'the princess who saved herself'. Obviously. As a kid the story that struck me as most similar to Cimorene's was the Buddha's, so... yeah.
1. I don't think the book itself is racist - maybe because the djinn is the only time it even tangentially comes up - but I haven't managed to [re]read anything by Wrede or Bujold since without getting uncomfortable. (Or McKinley, since the 'Obama isn't black because he looks like a white guy with a tan' remark, or Moon, since that classism-not-racism fiasco: giant bummer, having three of my top 6 or so childhood favorites spoiled in such a short time like that. Fortunately I know no ill of DWJ's public conduct).
