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2:40

excuses. Hey

2:44

listeners, we want your input on season

2:47

20, which I have to be honest, does

2:49

not sound like a real number. What

2:51

elements of the craft do you want us to talk about?

2:54

What episode or core concept do

2:56

you use or reference or recommend

2:58

the most? Or what are

3:00

you just having trouble with? After 20

3:03

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3:05

What element of writing do you wish

3:07

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3:10

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3:12

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3:14

writingexcuses.com. Season

3:16

19, episode 21. This

3:21

is Writing Excuses. A

3:23

close reading on world building, language as a

3:26

tool. 15 minutes long. Because you're

3:28

in a hurry. And we're not that smart. I'm

3:31

Mary Robinette. I'm Dong Won. I'm Dan. And

3:34

I'm Howard. So this

3:36

week, continuing our close reading series

3:38

on Arkady Martine's A Memory Called

3:40

Empire, I wanted

3:43

to dig into three very specific

3:45

sections over the course of this book. Last

3:47

week, we focused heavily on the opening. And

3:50

here, I wanna talk about

3:52

how Arkady uses language

3:54

as a tool. And both how

3:57

she phrases things, her word choices,

4:00

also the way in which she uses

4:02

the language of this culture and then,

4:04

well, the culture of this culture, the

4:06

literature, the poetry, the pop culture to

4:08

communicate certain very important concepts about the

4:10

book. So the first one I really

4:13

want to drill down on is on

4:15

page 19, as

4:17

she's approaching the city, we touched on this very

4:20

briefly last time, but there's a moment where

4:22

Iskander, her imago in her head

4:24

says the world and

4:27

he says it in text colonnily. So

4:30

the quote here is, he said it

4:32

in the text colonnily language, which made

4:34

it a tautology, the word for

4:36

world and the word for the city were

4:38

the same, as was the

4:40

word for empire. It

4:43

was impossible to specify, especially in

4:45

the high imperial dialect, one

4:47

had to note the context. This

4:50

is such a fascinating idea to me

4:52

in this communicates so much

4:54

about this culture. I found when I

4:56

read this book for the first time,

4:58

that sentence was dripping with menace for

5:00

me. That was one of the scariest

5:02

sentences in this book, because the idea

5:04

that this culture sees themselves as

5:06

so important that their city

5:09

is a tautology for the

5:12

entire empire is fascinating.

5:14

This is all ours, right? Going back to

5:16

last episode, we talked about how they were

5:18

looking at the star chart. And this is

5:20

moment where they're like all these tiny print

5:22

bricks are like, that's ours. And then we

5:25

see this concept, not just

5:27

in how they think

5:29

about it, but embedded into the language. And

5:31

because of the way language works, they

5:34

cannot think about it another way. There's

5:36

no way for them to linguistically communicate

5:38

the difference between us and

5:41

our empire, they are the empire

5:43

in the most fundamental hardwired ways

5:45

into their culture. As

5:48

an extension of this, I don't

5:51

remember specific examples from the book, but

5:54

there's this idea that words

5:56

like human and

5:58

people. and other

6:02

are defined in such a way that if you

6:04

are not text-colon-ly,

6:07

you might not qualify as human just

6:09

based on the word that gets used. You

6:11

might not qualify as people. And

6:14

the inherent othering of everybody who

6:16

is not a member of the

6:18

empire is also dripping

6:20

with menace. Yeah, that's one

6:22

of the things that I marked is that there, and

6:25

this happens with a lot of languages, that

6:28

the word that they have for her,

6:32

someone who is from outside the empire is

6:34

barbarian. And

6:36

that's barbarian alien.

6:39

And there's a point deeper in the book where

6:41

someone corrects and says foreigner. And

6:44

it was like, no, no, no, that's not the

6:46

right, that's not the language that we use. We

6:48

say foreigner. But it made me

6:50

think of, in Icelandic,

6:53

the word for foreigner is utlandr, which

6:55

is literally outlandr. Someone

6:59

who's not from here. My

7:02

family will say us folks.

7:07

And to mean anyone that is connected

7:09

to our family or friends, like

7:11

us folks. And this

7:13

demarcation that she

7:16

does in her world building with

7:18

this, by identifying

7:21

you are either part of the empire or

7:24

you are less than

7:27

human. It's

7:29

like the way that those languages structured is

7:31

so such really yummy world

7:33

building. An aspect of this we're gonna touch on

7:36

in an episode I'll be driving shortly,

7:38

which is the

7:41

line where she says, what do you mean by

7:43

us? What do you

7:45

mean by we? What do you mean

7:47

by me? And

7:49

we come back to that all the

7:51

time as we are having arguments about

7:53

grouping and alliance and

7:55

identity. And it is delicious

7:58

to me. So

8:00

delicious. Well, there's that moment also fairly early

8:02

on in the book where They

8:05

end up playing a little game where they each have to

8:07

tell a truth when asked about it And

8:10

three seagrass is forced to admit that

8:12

she likes aliens. Yeah, and it is

8:15

treated as this Perversion

8:17

it's treated as this embarrassing fact

8:19

of like oh my god. I

8:21

can't believe you like that It's and you know,

8:23

I don't know what the comparison is in our

8:25

culture But you can feel when

8:27

you establish culture in this way when

8:29

you establish language in this way Then

8:32

something the idea of liking an alien

8:34

does suddenly feel perverse You can suddenly

8:36

see how inside this culture if they

8:38

don't even have a word that isn't

8:40

exclusionary That of course

8:42

it'd be strange to want to be

8:45

close to something that is not us Yeah

8:50

You mentioned three seagrass and That's

8:53

one of one of the really cool language things I

8:55

want to get into is The

8:58

naming conventions that they use

9:00

in this culture Three seagrasses

9:02

is kind of sort of a main

9:05

character But everyone has

9:07

a name kind of like that

9:09

and and our kitty goes and explains Like

9:12

that they use a number and then they

9:14

use a word my favorite name and I

9:16

can't remember exactly but it was 17

9:19

all-terrain vehicle was 36 30

9:22

six there it is all-terrain tundra vehicle.

9:24

Yeah, this is one of my favorite

9:26

parts of this book it is a

9:28

line that made me laugh so hard

9:30

when I read it and You

9:34

know it's also a very emotionally significant line

9:37

for me because One of

9:39

the things this book is about is about the

9:41

concept of assimilation, right and names

9:44

are very fraught When

9:46

you are a child of immigrants or when

9:48

you are an immigrant to another culture names

9:50

become a very difficult fraught topic, right? I

9:53

am unusual among my peers because I

9:55

use a Korean name. I

9:57

don't use an Americanized name most of the

9:59

other Koreans I know, or

10:02

other Asian Americans in general have names that

10:04

are very typical, usually very Judeo-Christian

10:06

names picked out of a baby book or

10:08

picked from the Bible. And

10:12

I don't have that. Well, I do

10:14

have one. I'm not telling you what it is because I

10:16

hate it more than anything. But

10:19

I do have an American name, my brother has an

10:21

American name, we both used our Korean style names. And

10:27

that choice has been one that has been

10:29

an ongoing challenge for me over the course

10:31

of my life because my name unfortunately also

10:33

happens to sound like a famous character from

10:36

literature. So I get one joke every single

10:38

time I introduce myself to a new person

10:40

and that is repeated over and over again.

10:44

I also have a thing where I cannot

10:46

quite pronounce my name correctly. And

10:49

you'll hear me say it in a mostly

10:51

Americanized way on the show, which is Dong

10:53

Wan, which is how I've for years and

10:55

years introduced myself to white

10:58

Americans. I

11:00

have recently been shifting a little bit to something closer

11:02

to the Korean pronunciation, which is more like Dong Wan.

11:07

And that has been a shift I've been trying to make. It's

11:09

kind of hard to do because I'm

11:11

used to saying it a certain way. But all

11:13

of this is to say that names are so

11:15

important because they identify you in the culture, they

11:18

can be exclusionary and they can be an invitation.

11:21

So this idea that this person came

11:23

to this culture and named themselves 36

11:25

All Terrain Tundra Vehicle, which is hilarious

11:27

to us as the audience, but it

11:30

is also hilarious to the people in

11:32

the culture. The

11:34

line that comes after that is, a revelation

11:37

that produced in Mahit and Three Seagrass, a

11:39

kind of stunned silence. No

11:42

one would actually name a child that Three

11:44

Seagrass complained after a moment. He has no

11:46

taste. This idea

11:48

of taste is so important because

11:51

this is clearly someone who wasn't born to

11:53

this culture. They identify that immediately. And

11:56

this person has desperately reached for something that

11:58

sounds right to them. They're like, well, that's

12:00

a number and that's a noun, but

12:02

it's an absurd noun and it's the wrong

12:04

kind of number For

12:08

English speakers, there is

12:10

an unwritten mostly rule about

12:13

adjective order We

12:15

can tell when when adjectives are in the

12:17

wrong order and

12:19

you will often see people string together

12:22

adjectives in Instruction manuals

12:24

or whatever and you realize oh, oh

12:27

you didn't get the memo about the way adjectives are

12:29

supposed to work and the fake

12:33

AP style book said Adjectives

12:36

should be listed in increasing awesomeness

12:39

the blue Italian

12:42

Rocket propelled monkey piloted motorcycle

12:44

and I've always laughed at

12:46

that because it follows both

12:49

rules and And

12:52

I was reminded of that by you know

12:54

36 alter in tundra vehicle 3c

12:57

grass is given pause because Oh,

13:00

that's technically right, but you ran a foul

13:03

of a very different rule. Yeah Yeah And

13:06

the amount of world building that's communicated in this

13:08

right because the names are one of the striking

13:10

things soon as we meet 3c grass soon as

13:12

you meet 12 Azalea six direction all these people

13:14

we get the sense of like wow What a

13:16

weird way to name people right like from our

13:18

perspective as the reader. It feels alien and cool

13:22

In this joke is an opportunity for the author

13:25

to say, okay. Here's what's going on. Here's how

13:27

this works Yeah, you pick a number you

13:29

pick a noun these kinds of nouns are good

13:31

These kind of numbers are good in like,

13:33

you know, you get a sense It's

13:35

an opportunity for just to stop and

13:37

tell us, you know going back to show don't

13:39

tell this is her way of saying I'm gonna

13:42

take a break here. I'm gonna explain what's going

13:44

on with these so that you've experienced the delight

13:46

of running to them The first time were

13:48

you know far enough into the book that I

13:50

can slow down and tell you what's going on

13:52

here and just to talk about the the specific

13:54

mechanics of one of the things that That

13:57

Arkady is doing with this When

14:01

she slows down and explains it,

14:03

she's also making it about something else.

14:06

She's making it about a bonding moment

14:08

between these two characters. And she's also

14:11

using, there's a brief

14:13

flashback that Mahit has

14:15

where she remembers vividly the

14:17

part of her early language training

14:19

on Ocelle when her entire class had

14:22

been encouraged to make up Texaklani names

14:24

to call themselves while they were learning to

14:26

speak. And she'd picked

14:28

nine orchid because it was

14:30

the heroine of her favorite book. And

14:36

so she's having this moment where she's explaining

14:38

it to us and it's

14:40

a tell moment because she's like,

14:42

this is not how these names work. But

14:46

she's also masking it by having it be

14:49

doing some load bearing on character, doing

14:52

load bearing on history. She's having this

14:54

moment do multiple different things. So

14:57

when you have something like this that you

14:59

need to explain to your reader, look at

15:03

the different things it can be doing

15:05

so that it's not just, wait,

15:07

let me stop the story. I,

15:10

to me, this got

15:12

a pass because I laughed at the

15:14

name. Yes. And anytime you can make

15:16

me laugh, that page had a reward.

15:19

Thank you for making me read it.

15:21

Well, and I will also say the other thing that

15:23

happens for me is that because she

15:25

slows down here when much

15:28

deeper in the book, when six helicopter comes in,

15:30

we know that that his name is also absurd.

15:33

And and so we are

15:35

in the joke with everybody else

15:38

who's having that moment. Well,

15:40

and again, and all of this speaks to the core

15:42

thematics of the book. It's a

15:44

funny moment. It's a character moment. It's only

15:46

things, but it's also a moment that is

15:48

about empire and how it works. The thing

15:51

that she talks about in terms of the

15:53

flashback is a thing that if you go

15:55

to an Asian country, they're in a language

15:57

school, they're all picking American names, right? In

15:59

South Asia. in Korea, in Japan, China, they're

16:01

going to pick an American name so that they

16:04

have that thing in the same way

16:06

that, you know, Mahit picks nine orchid

16:08

to be her Tekskalandli name. And

16:11

she's reflecting all these real world themes,

16:13

rooting it in things that are familiar

16:15

to us, so that we understand what

16:17

empire means and how that works in

16:19

our world. On that note,

16:21

we're going to take a quick break. And when

16:23

we come back, we're going to keep unpacking some

16:25

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19:49

right, so one thing that I wanted

19:51

to talk about here is another neat

19:53

trick that Arkady is using. The

19:56

culture is kind

19:59

of sort of... least linguistically, has

20:01

a lot of Aztec

20:03

influence in it. Teixcalon

20:05

is an overtly Aztec-ish

20:07

word. And one

20:10

of the reasons that I suspect she

20:12

may have made that decision is

20:15

precisely because the words are

20:17

hard to pronounce, right?

20:20

Teixcalon, which

20:22

would be Teixcalon in actual Aztec,

20:24

I think it was an overt

20:26

purposeful choice to pronounce it more

20:28

westernized than that, just to

20:30

kind of continue the theme of cross-culture

20:32

stuff. That's

20:35

the name of the empire and the name of the city and the name of

20:37

the planet. Something

20:39

that comes from Teixcalon is

20:41

Teixcalonli. The word

20:44

for a person who is from

20:46

Teixcalon or the

20:48

people from there is Teixcalonli-tslim.

20:51

And you get these words and you

20:53

kind of stumble over them and I

20:55

think that that's on purpose. As

20:57

a way of really hitting home,

20:59

this is different. This is outside

21:02

of your realm

21:04

of experience. This is outside of

21:06

your comfort zone. You are trying

21:08

to assimilate these very difficult linguistic

21:11

concepts. It also signals

21:13

to the reader that language matters.

21:16

Like I am going to

21:18

make you figure out how to say

21:21

Teixcalonli-tslim and you're

21:23

going to do it and that is going

21:25

to let you know to pay close attention

21:27

to the language because it is worth this

21:29

effort. She's doing

21:31

the thing where she manages to

21:33

make the reader fly. All

21:36

right, so one thing that I want

21:38

to talk about here is another neat

21:40

trick that Arkady is using. The

21:44

culture is kind

21:46

of sort of, well at least linguistically,

21:49

has a lot of Aztec influence in

21:51

it. Teixcalon is

21:53

an overtly Aztec-ish word

21:56

and one of the reasons

21:58

that I suspect she made have made

22:00

that decision is precisely

22:03

because the words are hard

22:05

to pronounce. Takes

22:07

Kalan, which

22:10

would be Teix Kalan in actual Aztec,

22:12

I think it was an overt, purposeful

22:14

choice to pronounce it more westernized than

22:16

that, just to continue the

22:19

theme of cross-culture stuff. That's

22:22

the name of the empire and the name of the city and the name

22:24

of the planet. Something

22:27

that comes from Teix Kalan is Teix

22:29

Kalanli. The word

22:31

for a person who is from Teix

22:33

Kalan or the people

22:35

from there is Teix Kalanli flim. You

22:39

get these words and you stumble

22:41

over them and I think that that's

22:43

on purpose. As a

22:45

way of really hitting home, this

22:47

is different. This is outside of

22:49

your realm of

22:52

experience. This is outside of your

22:54

comfort zone. You are trying to

22:56

assimilate these very difficult linguistic concepts.

22:59

It also signals

23:01

to the reader that language matters.

23:05

I am going to make you figure out

23:07

how to say Teix Kalanli flim and

23:10

you're going to do it and that is

23:12

going to let you know to pay close

23:14

attention to the language because it is worth

23:16

this effort. She's

23:18

doing the thing where she manages

23:21

to make the reader feel

23:23

the subjectivity of what it is to be an

23:25

immigrant. She forces the

23:28

reader into the position

23:30

of being a foreigner to a culture.

23:33

I think we talked about audience

23:36

surrogates earlier but

23:38

this is such a grounded way

23:40

and such a material way to

23:42

make that felt. The way she

23:44

does that is by introducing a

23:48

conlang in some ways, a constructed language in some

23:50

ways. We don't get all of it but we get some hints

23:52

of it. In introducing

23:54

culture, the poetry, the

23:56

epic poems, the

23:58

different reframing. brains, you

24:00

know, even when we get, you know, a couple

24:03

that is an epithet

24:05

for a person, right?

24:08

When nine ads appears, 19 ads or nine ads?

24:10

19. There's that beautiful epithet that she

24:16

has about the edge shine of

24:18

a knife, right? And what a

24:20

remarkable striking moment. And wow, did

24:22

that establish a character immediately. Like

24:25

to be referred to poetically as the edge shine

24:27

of a knife. How terrifying that person must be.

24:30

One of the things that she never did,

24:33

that Arkady never did was use

24:35

the word meme. And the

24:39

text column, text column

24:41

culture is especially

24:44

with the poetry is inherently

24:46

mimetic. All the

24:48

time people will make references, will

24:50

say things. And Mahit

24:53

realizes, oh, that last thing

24:56

is aligned from this poem about

24:58

the buildings. And so what you're

25:00

saying is not just thing, but

25:03

also, also referencing

25:06

a building at that idea comes

25:08

back over and over. And I

25:11

mean, we see it in our own culture, you know,

25:13

as people will make pop

25:15

culture references. Oh,

25:18

I understood that joke. Yeah. And and everybody

25:20

is now on board. I loved

25:23

that she did it and was frankly amazed

25:26

that she did it without ever using the

25:28

word meme. Yeah, I mean, and I think

25:30

it's a great comparison, you know, as someone

25:32

who's chronically online, I'm capable of having a

25:35

conversation with my friends that is impenetrable to

25:37

an outsider, you know, based on the number

25:39

of memes and references that we're making. And

25:42

I want to show how this is used in the text

25:44

in a way that I found particularly fascinating. This is another

25:47

one of my very favorite moments. It's

25:49

from page 86. For those of you who have the print

25:51

edition, this

25:53

is when the bomb in the cafe goes

25:55

off, which I mentioned a couple episodes.

25:58

So she knew the text Kalanly word

26:00

for explosion. A centerpiece

26:02

of military poetry usually adorned

26:04

with adjectives like shattering or

26:07

fire flowered. But now she

26:09

learned by extrapolation from the shouting, the

26:11

one for bomb. It was

26:13

a short word. You could scream it

26:15

very loudly. She figured it

26:18

out because it was the word

26:20

people were screaming when they weren't

26:22

screaming help. I am obsessed with

26:24

this paragraph. It is so powerful. It

26:27

is so upsetting. It communicates the true

26:29

horror of what has just happened to

26:31

her and the people around her. And

26:34

it tells us so much about Meheet

26:36

as well. Her first thing is to

26:38

go to this cerebral abstraction. She treats

26:41

into academic thought and poetry before she

26:43

returns to the word that they're screaming

26:45

when they're not screaming help. Right. And

26:47

also that there is a genre of military

26:49

poetry. Yes, exactly. And so

26:52

in the way that Howard is talking

26:54

about this sort of mimetic way of

26:56

having culture, the word for explosion

26:58

is part of that, right? They're

27:00

beautiful poems about fire flowered explosions,

27:03

but nobody talks about bombs. Well, and

27:05

that's another that goes back to our

27:07

conversation about scale and this concept of,

27:10

you know, how close are you to

27:12

the subject that you're talking about? Because

27:14

from far away, you can talk about

27:16

a fire flowered explosion and it sounds

27:19

really cool. But when you're down

27:21

there on the street surrounded by rubble and

27:23

smoke, it is a bomb. You need a

27:25

word. You can scream loudly. You are lying

27:27

on the ground thinking, I

27:29

learned a new word. And

27:32

also who would teach you the word bomb to go on

27:34

a diplomatic mission? You don't need to know that. No, it

27:37

reminds me briefly of when

27:39

I was learning Icelandic, I

27:41

initially was doing, you know, learned and

27:44

yes, I speak Icelandic a little bit, but there

27:47

were two texts that I had a

27:49

choice from. One of which taught

27:51

me phrases like, where is the

27:53

train station? And there are no train stations in Iceland.

27:55

There is no circumstance under which you would need to

27:57

be able to say, where is the train station? in

28:00

Icelandic because you would have to be

28:02

someplace else where like

28:04

there aren't Icelandic speakers outside

28:07

of Iceland except in Minnesota. This

28:10

is that damn duolingo owl trying to convince me that I

28:12

just know how to say the cat is under the pizza

28:14

table. Yes, but one

28:16

of the other books, one

28:19

of the in the first or second chapter,

28:21

one of the words that you learned was

28:23

decapitation and I was like this person has

28:25

read Icelandic epics. Yeah. And that for me

28:28

is one of the things

28:31

about these is like you

28:34

know the things that everything that

28:36

is in this is like what is

28:38

valorized. Yeah. What is

28:40

valorized and a bomb is not valorized

28:43

and you know explosions yes but

28:46

explosions from starships that are

28:48

you know and warheads that are

28:50

coming down but not a handmade bomb

28:52

in a cafe. That's not a valorous

28:55

experience. Well and correct me if I

28:57

am misremembering because it has

28:59

been a few years since I have read this other

29:02

than than skimming it for

29:04

these episodes. Don't

29:06

they come back later and propagandize

29:09

this explosion a little bit

29:12

this bomb and just

29:14

the language that they use to talk

29:16

about it changes. It isn't a bomb

29:18

anymore. It's a fire-flowered

29:20

explosion. They're using it for political

29:22

purposes by changing the words they

29:24

use to describe it. Yeah. They're

29:27

taking it from being common to

29:29

being elevated. Yeah. Right. And

29:31

so again this is one of those moments

29:34

where so many layers of the story and

29:36

character and world are in this right. So

29:38

just you know to recap in some ways

29:40

she's again explaining culture how

29:42

the culture works by starting in this

29:44

poetic way explaining the stakes

29:46

of the book because hey Mahika

29:49

get blown up her

29:51

life is at risk right. She's communicating a

29:53

different kind of risk than we've seen before

29:55

up until now it's been political it's been

29:57

you know words bombs are

29:59

in play now, right? She's

30:02

lying on trapped under rubble while the person

30:04

she came to meet is her

30:06

his blood is dripping on her face. It's

30:08

a visceral, terrifying moment. But

30:10

more than anything else, she's using this moment to

30:13

communicate such fear and helplessness

30:15

and pain, the way this shifts into

30:17

this such an emotional place by the

30:19

end of it with that, like the

30:21

word people were screaming, right? Like, it's

30:25

so grounding, and it's so scary,

30:27

and it's so upsetting to communicate

30:29

what violence actually is. And that

30:31

establishes such the themes of the

30:34

book of, we can talk about

30:36

it at the subtract level, but the reality is

30:38

this. And don't forget that. One

30:40

of the first things that I try to do when

30:42

I'm in a new

30:44

place for the new language is learn how

30:47

humor works, so that I might

30:49

reach that high bar of being able to tell a

30:51

joke. And the

30:53

moment that I was hoping for

30:55

in this book, quietly, but hoping

30:58

nonetheless, with all of

31:00

Mahit's appreciation of poetry and

31:02

three seagrasses standing as

31:04

an actual poet, thought,

31:06

wow, if that was me, the

31:09

real horror would be, what if I have

31:11

to write a poem? And

31:13

the stand up and cheer moment for me

31:16

in this book was Mahit

31:18

and three seagrasses have to

31:20

write a poem upon

31:22

which their life literally depends. And

31:24

I love that so much. And the

31:26

language aspect

31:28

of the book supported it in

31:31

a way that stood

31:34

up and cheered. Worldbuilding is storytelling.

31:36

Yeah, absolutely. And

31:39

she does a really great

31:41

job of, one of the things for

31:44

you, Rita, when you're thinking about this,

31:46

is how many different ways can you

31:48

use a piece of

31:50

worldbuilding? And so she's using

31:52

language to do multiple

31:55

different things, which is part

31:57

of why when we talk about muscular

31:59

writing, That's what we're talking about

32:01

is having it do more than one

32:03

thing. This was such a big flex.

32:06

Such a big flex. I

32:09

think we'll leave it on that. I have a

32:11

little bit of homework for you.

32:13

I would love for you to write

32:15

a scene that describes a fictional piece

32:18

of literature, whether it's a poem, a

32:20

song, a story, comic book,

32:23

that means something to the people in

32:25

the story that you were telling. This

32:29

has been Writing Excuses. You're out of

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