Stargazy Pies And Imperial Stories - Part 1

WEBVTT100:00:06.600 --> 00:00:08.430Hello, and welcome to myth makers.200:00:09.060 --> 00:00:13.470Myth makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives300:00:13.580 --> 00:00:18.390brought to you by the Oxford center for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding.400:00:18.690 --> 00:00:21.700I'm an author, but I'm also director of the center.500:00:22.640 --> 00:00:26.740And today I am joined by Victoria Godard,600:00:27.360 --> 00:00:32.060who actually was invited on the podcast by special request of one of our700:00:32.060 --> 00:00:34.180listeners. So don't say we don't deliver.800:00:34.680 --> 00:00:37.930So if you've got any more ideas for guests, please do send them in.900:00:37.960 --> 00:00:41.930Because for me it's been an enormous pleasure over this week,1000:00:42.650 --> 00:00:46.010actually getting to understand and read Victoria's fantasy works.1100:00:46.150 --> 00:00:47.570So first of all, hello to Victoria.1200:00:48.380 --> 00:00:49.730Hello. Thanks for having me.1300:00:50.550 --> 00:00:53.370So, Victoria, where are we talking to you? Where's your home base?1400:00:54.490 --> 00:00:55.930I live in prince Edward island,1500:00:55.940 --> 00:01:00.160which is the smallest of the Canadian provinces it's in Eastern Canada and the1600:01:00.160 --> 00:01:00.993Maritimes.1700:01:01.950 --> 00:01:02.783Fantastic.1800:01:03.340 --> 00:01:08.180So should we have a little overview of the kind of things you write? Um,1900:01:08.240 --> 00:01:13.220so people understand where you sit in the fantasy Panion as it2000:01:13.220 --> 00:01:14.100were. What are the,2100:01:14.100 --> 00:01:17.290what kind of series do you write and how would you describe them?2200:01:18.470 --> 00:01:19.920Well, I tend to, uh,2300:01:20.070 --> 00:01:24.520tell people I write in the general kind of mythic tradition from the inklings2400:01:24.520 --> 00:01:28.040onwards. So this was a nice fit with your podcast. Um,2500:01:28.420 --> 00:01:33.320I'm kind of one of those English derived medievalists by background. Uh,2600:01:33.320 --> 00:01:35.550my family's British and, um,2700:01:36.040 --> 00:01:40.630first my dad was a immigrant actually. And, um, always been very,2800:01:40.820 --> 00:01:42.750very fond of them. I tend to,2900:01:42.910 --> 00:01:47.270I like writing kind of a vast sprawling interconnected narrative universe,3000:01:47.460 --> 00:01:50.670exploring different, different elements of it. And I tend to like writing,3100:01:51.950 --> 00:01:52.270I suppose,3200:01:52.270 --> 00:01:57.060the stories that happen around the epics what's going on after you've had the3300:01:57.060 --> 00:01:57.760grand speech,3400:01:57.760 --> 00:02:02.460how do you get from there to the actual work of the work of living3500:02:02.840 --> 00:02:05.380and how you, how do you do it? That's something I find really interesting.3600:02:06.760 --> 00:02:10.500So you recommended to me as did the listener who wrote in, um,3700:02:10.520 --> 00:02:12.810one of your books called the hands of the emperor,3800:02:12.810 --> 00:02:16.610which I'd be absolutely thrilled to talk to you about in a moment,3900:02:17.310 --> 00:02:19.330but you also, as you say, connected to this,4000:02:19.350 --> 00:02:23.330you sort of dip into the history before and later, and, um,4100:02:23.990 --> 00:02:27.290you use your world building to go where you want,4200:02:27.830 --> 00:02:32.200but you also have a series which is more like a, a duo, uh, two,4300:02:32.340 --> 00:02:37.120two connected characters. And that starts with the Starz book. Is that correct?4400:02:37.860 --> 00:02:40.560Yes, that's right. Um, I like, I,4500:02:40.640 --> 00:02:43.600I enjoy writing a whole bunch of different kinds of books and that's something4600:02:43.600 --> 00:02:46.840I've always really liked, um, to connect to, to your kind of thing. Like,4700:02:46.840 --> 00:02:50.550I've always liked that about say Toki where you have such different books in the4800:02:50.550 --> 00:02:54.910same universe as the Hobbit and the Lord of the rings. And, and, um, so I've,4900:02:54.910 --> 00:02:58.150I've enjoyed that or somebody like Dorothy Sayers in her mysteries where she5000:02:58.150 --> 00:03:00.320writes different kinds of mysteries with the same characters.5100:03:00.340 --> 00:03:02.240And so that kind of a, that's always appealed to me.5200:03:02.240 --> 00:03:05.800That's sort of stretching yourself as craft and just being able to tell5300:03:05.800 --> 00:03:08.960different sorts of stories and focus on different elements of them.5400:03:09.740 --> 00:03:14.560And so the green wing and dart series is sort of a bit of a more, yeah,5500:03:14.560 --> 00:03:18.030it's a duo kind of friendly, a little, a little bit of a cozy mystery,5600:03:18.180 --> 00:03:22.110sort of underlying it there and a bit of an adventure. And, um,5700:03:22.300 --> 00:03:26.510whereas the hands of the emperor is, you know, it's a bit a, among many things.5800:03:26.510 --> 00:03:30.910It's about a bureau cut on the edge of retirement kind of thing. And, um, so,5900:03:31.950 --> 00:03:33.930so I suppose in terms of genre, I just kind of say, well,6000:03:34.150 --> 00:03:35.130I'm right in the middle of fantasy,6100:03:35.270 --> 00:03:37.320but I tend to write these sort of slightly off,6200:03:37.460 --> 00:03:39.840off kilter towards genre conventions.6300:03:40.830 --> 00:03:44.440Yeah. And I think that's what is so wonderful about your writing Victoria,6400:03:44.460 --> 00:03:48.200is that you feel really original. Um, that's,6500:03:48.670 --> 00:03:51.240there's nothing wrong with reading something which F fits in a genre.6600:03:51.460 --> 00:03:54.400So if you read a romance or a detective story,6700:03:54.420 --> 00:03:58.830you know how it's gonna turn out or a Western, you, you know, before you start,6800:03:58.830 --> 00:04:01.990what's gonna happen more or less, but you dunno what the journey is. Whereas,6900:04:01.990 --> 00:04:03.710when I started reading hands of the emperor,7000:04:03.750 --> 00:04:07.830I had no idea what the journey was gonna be. And it was a pure delight.7100:04:07.980 --> 00:04:12.230It's a longer book. It's not a sort of thing you can knock out in a a day. Um,7200:04:12.230 --> 00:04:16.500but I have a thoroughly enjoyed my week spent with your main character7300:04:16.910 --> 00:04:20.500Clefa. So, but before we come to him, um,7400:04:20.720 --> 00:04:24.180I'm just thinking about the influence and place, uh,7500:04:24.320 --> 00:04:28.980on your stories because the wining and dart series feels quite7600:04:29.050 --> 00:04:33.490like a sort of 18th century feel.7700:04:33.850 --> 00:04:38.730I mean, people are the sort of small, small villagey town type society.7800:04:38.780 --> 00:04:41.130There feels like that. Whereas the,7900:04:41.510 --> 00:04:46.090the world of the hands of the emperor is very much a much bigger8000:04:46.180 --> 00:04:48.410scale. It's got, um,8100:04:49.890 --> 00:04:54.600a sense of almost mixture of the sort of Chinese bureaucracy8200:04:54.900 --> 00:04:58.640and the exams that used to have to do to be part of the Chinese bureaucracy,8300:04:58.640 --> 00:05:03.520but also island culture that could be from, um, I dunno,8400:05:03.690 --> 00:05:08.280Maori or Pacific islands. I mean that you are, you're creating your own world,8500:05:08.890 --> 00:05:12.510but I felt that there was a sample of different elements that you were going8600:05:12.570 --> 00:05:15.070for. So as a writer,8700:05:15.180 --> 00:05:19.750have you traveled first and gone around squirreling away all these8800:05:19.920 --> 00:05:21.750ideas? Or is it something that you think, oh,8900:05:21.790 --> 00:05:23.950I want to do this and then go and have a look at it.9000:05:24.950 --> 00:05:28.350It's a little bit of both. Um, as I said, my family's, uh,9100:05:28.350 --> 00:05:32.390British and I've spent a number of visits and some quite some time visiting9200:05:32.390 --> 00:05:35.630family members in various parts of England and Wales, particularly,9300:05:35.730 --> 00:05:40.270and I did a year abroad in Scotland, um, when I was in undergrad. And,9400:05:40.690 --> 00:05:45.230um, and so for me, I've always really enjoyed that kind of,9500:05:45.730 --> 00:05:50.220yes, the 19th century, sort of the Jane Austin or early, late 18th,9600:05:50.220 --> 00:05:55.020early 19th century, that kind of period of the early novels. Um, and then,9700:05:55.640 --> 00:05:59.160and the sort of early Regency stuff.9800:05:59.500 --> 00:06:01.000And then also just sort of the,9900:06:01.100 --> 00:06:04.960the kind of idealized vision that people have of Oxford and Cambridge and things10000:06:04.960 --> 00:06:07.120like that. And I enjoyed playing with that and thinking about,10100:06:07.200 --> 00:06:09.840I have an academic background. And so I enjoyed thinking about, you know,10200:06:10.270 --> 00:06:14.280what the, the good parts of that, and also the bad parts of that in some ways.10300:06:14.280 --> 00:06:16.870So we haven't seen that much of the university experience, but I,10400:06:16.950 --> 00:06:21.630I enjoy thinking about it. And, um, so for me kind of travel,10500:06:21.990 --> 00:06:26.350I, I once spent about six months walking down the length of England and staying10600:06:26.350 --> 00:06:28.270with various relatives and friends along the way.10700:06:28.650 --> 00:06:32.710And so that kind of sense of the landscape, um, was a great10800:06:34.620 --> 00:06:37.770resource for me. Um, otherwise I've lived around quite,10900:06:37.840 --> 00:06:40.050I've moved quite a lot around Canada, growing up,11000:06:40.380 --> 00:06:43.450lived in 14 places across the country.11100:06:44.270 --> 00:06:48.570And my parents spent 10 years in pap, new Guinea north of Australia.11200:06:49.070 --> 00:06:53.010And so I had a lot of stories about Papua New Guinea in Australia growing up.11300:06:53.220 --> 00:06:56.240And I think that really comes out strongly in the hands of the emperor with the11400:06:56.930 --> 00:06:58.960white seas Islander culture, which is, um,11500:06:59.370 --> 00:07:03.160quite strongly based on sort of Polynesian historic Polynesian culture.11600:07:03.220 --> 00:07:07.080But there's quite a lot of P Guian elements in there too from the TRO brandand11700:07:07.080 --> 00:07:09.000islands and the Highlands, which is where my parents lived.11800:07:09.260 --> 00:07:12.670And so I had lots of stories in like the material culture of that,11900:07:12.670 --> 00:07:16.070that white parents had various elements of it and friends of theirs, um,12000:07:16.090 --> 00:07:19.830who come to visit us, or we visited them. I've only been there once, but, uh,12100:07:19.830 --> 00:07:23.690that I remember I was there when I was very, as a baby, but as an adult,12200:07:23.690 --> 00:07:28.330I've only been there once. And so it was a very, um, rich experience,12300:07:28.480 --> 00:07:32.920even being a quite short trip. So I enjoy, uh, that combination. I,12400:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.920I feel like it's important to be very respectful of other cultures and I try12500:07:36.920 --> 00:07:41.720really hard to, uh, not to appropriate, um, cultural elements,12600:07:41.980 --> 00:07:45.520um, especially for ones that have been, you know, historically colonized.12700:07:45.860 --> 00:07:46.760But at the same time,12800:07:46.880 --> 00:07:50.590I also think it's very important to try and broaden the base that you're12900:07:50.670 --> 00:07:51.290building off of.13000:07:51.290 --> 00:07:55.230So the grooming and Dick dart series is quite largely based off of kind of the13100:07:55.230 --> 00:07:59.590English country tradition and country like country, house, um,13200:07:59.980 --> 00:08:03.950stories too, right? Like that kind of the mysteries that you get out of, or,13300:08:03.950 --> 00:08:05.150and that, that tradition there,13400:08:05.610 --> 00:08:09.220but the hands of the emperor and the world that that's set in, which is Zuni,13500:08:09.700 --> 00:08:14.620I deliberately wanted it to be a non-Western European, uh, based society. I was,13600:08:14.740 --> 00:08:17.980I really wanted to, to get away from that. So I, I,13700:08:18.080 --> 00:08:22.140the different parts of Zuni are drawn from different, um,13800:08:22.450 --> 00:08:25.690non-Western cultures as a conscious choice there.13900:08:26.870 --> 00:08:31.330And what the person who wrote in said, is I something along the lines of,14000:08:31.410 --> 00:08:36.170I defy you not to fall in love with Clefa now Clefa is the main character,14100:08:36.950 --> 00:08:40.170um, of the hands of the emperor. He is the hands of the emperor.14200:08:40.670 --> 00:08:43.250You could describe him very boringly as bureaucrat,14300:08:43.350 --> 00:08:47.360but actually he is just the most wonderful,14400:08:47.550 --> 00:08:49.400wonderful character. Um,14500:08:49.840 --> 00:08:54.640I was saying to you just before we started recording that he reminds me very14600:08:54.640 --> 00:08:57.280much of the, um,14700:08:57.330 --> 00:09:01.800count Rosoff who is the lead figure in the fantastic, um,14800:09:02.010 --> 00:09:06.400novel gentleman in Moscow by Amor towels, which is a historical novel,14900:09:07.320 --> 00:09:10.440I think being filmed at the moment. Um, but the,15000:09:10.780 --> 00:09:14.670how that story works is that you just love spending time with that character.15100:09:14.670 --> 00:09:19.550And I felt absolutely the same about Clefa. And as you were just saying,15200:09:19.660 --> 00:09:22.790what you're thinking about in this book are things which don't make it into15300:09:22.790 --> 00:09:26.590fantasy. It's the stuff that's not around the battle. It's um,15400:09:27.130 --> 00:09:29.830how do you hand on power?15500:09:31.230 --> 00:09:32.880How do you retire?15600:09:33.820 --> 00:09:37.680And there's also a really strong theme about what do the people back home think15700:09:37.680 --> 00:09:42.560of those who have gone into another walk of life and got success elsewhere,15800:09:42.560 --> 00:09:45.440which doesn't translate into the local context at all.15900:09:45.440 --> 00:09:49.480They completely misunderstand him in sad ways.16000:09:50.850 --> 00:09:53.910So when you started this book,16100:09:54.010 --> 00:09:56.430did you start with the character and just see where it went,16200:09:56.450 --> 00:09:59.870or did you already have those themes in mind and then, you know,16300:09:59.870 --> 00:10:01.150built him to fit the plot?16400:10:02.610 --> 00:10:06.670No, <laugh>, it was a very character driven, um, different book.16500:10:07.130 --> 00:10:11.420So my, my kind of general project, as I said, I tend to,16600:10:11.460 --> 00:10:15.060I write these sort of, it's a sprawling interconnected stories in my,16700:10:15.080 --> 00:10:19.460in my narrative universe here. And they, they there's sort of two parallel core,16800:10:19.840 --> 00:10:22.580um, to that, that project.16900:10:22.840 --> 00:10:25.980One of them there's this empire called the empire of a stand laws,17000:10:26.110 --> 00:10:29.330which has this catastrophic cataclysmic,17100:10:29.330 --> 00:10:33.610magical collapse that happens. And so I, it's sort of,17200:10:33.830 --> 00:10:37.090one of my projects is the lead up to, to that collapse.17300:10:37.110 --> 00:10:39.930And then what happens afterwards, I'm not really a dystopian kind of writer.17400:10:40.070 --> 00:10:42.850I'm really much more interested in how do you rebuild, um,17500:10:43.040 --> 00:10:44.730what happens afterwards, but that,17600:10:45.400 --> 00:10:49.880that kind of shadow that falls across the entire, um,17700:10:50.180 --> 00:10:54.400entire cultures and individuals is something that I find a very interesting to17800:10:54.400 --> 00:10:54.820think about.17900:10:54.820 --> 00:10:58.760And I think this connects back to something like Toki and the shadow of world18000:10:58.780 --> 00:11:01.000war, I, that's always behind, um,18100:11:01.380 --> 00:11:03.440all those authors of the first half of the 20th century.18200:11:03.860 --> 00:11:07.110And I've always found that interwar period quite interesting for that with,18300:11:07.220 --> 00:11:10.070with people, not always talking directly about it, but it's always there.18400:11:10.450 --> 00:11:14.030And so in my novels that kind of the fall of a stand laws is, is that,18500:11:14.300 --> 00:11:19.130that culture wide devastation that people don't always talk about,18600:11:19.130 --> 00:11:20.970but is always there. So that's one part of the project.18700:11:20.990 --> 00:11:24.840And then the second part of the project is this figure of, um,18800:11:26.910 --> 00:11:31.490of one character, um, and who is, um,18900:11:31.490 --> 00:11:32.530called Fitzer cell.19000:11:32.530 --> 00:11:35.490And he's a mean character in various books and referred to in other ones,19100:11:35.490 --> 00:11:37.890he's this poet. And so as part of that,19200:11:38.070 --> 00:11:40.490one thing I was interested in with the fall of a Standal as,19300:11:40.490 --> 00:11:44.680and the effects of it was the character of the last emperor of a Standal as who19400:11:44.720 --> 00:11:45.550survives the,19500:11:45.550 --> 00:11:48.680this destruction and ends up having to kind of rebuild on a personal level.19600:11:49.260 --> 00:11:53.520And so I started off writing this, what was going to be a short vignette, uh,19700:11:53.610 --> 00:11:57.480about the last emperor and what he was like in the period after things had sort19800:11:57.480 --> 00:11:59.600of settled down after the fall. And I thought, oh, his,19900:11:59.840 --> 00:12:02.680secretary's probably a good window onto what he's like as a person.20000:12:03.260 --> 00:12:06.560And so I started writing about his secretary and it was really only intended to20100:12:06.560 --> 00:12:09.160be a couple of scenes or maybe one scene, like that was all I was doing.20200:12:09.500 --> 00:12:13.110And by the end of the scene, I had fallen in love with CLE, for as a character.20300:12:13.110 --> 00:12:16.670He was just so interesting and he just kind of kept going. And,20400:12:16.670 --> 00:12:18.390and that was the story was, was an,20500:12:18.530 --> 00:12:22.710was an unusual one to write because I usually have more of a sense of what the20600:12:22.710 --> 00:12:25.600story is to start with, or at least like,20700:12:25.600 --> 00:12:29.560I often know what the emotional tone I wanna end with is, or like the, the very,20800:12:29.700 --> 00:12:32.030the Demont, I don't always know what the climax is,20900:12:32.030 --> 00:12:34.670but I usually know what the Demont is and where the characters end up.21000:12:34.930 --> 00:12:38.590And so for that one, I had no sense of what the arc was at first.21100:12:39.030 --> 00:12:42.070I just kind of kept, but I kept being drawn to writing scenes,21200:12:42.130 --> 00:12:44.950and I just kept imagining them, like, I'd be driving or I'd be, you know,21300:12:44.950 --> 00:12:46.350taking the dogs for a walk or something,21400:12:46.350 --> 00:12:49.460and the scene would come into mind and I, I just have to go write it.21500:12:49.460 --> 00:12:53.020And so for, I don't know, a year, a year and a half, maybe two years,21600:12:53.140 --> 00:12:56.260I just kind of kept going back to it and picking away at it.21700:12:56.280 --> 00:12:58.540And I was enjoying writing it so much.21800:12:58.540 --> 00:13:02.380Like I just love spending time with Clefa and eventually I was like, okay,21900:13:02.380 --> 00:13:03.860you know what? I'm not getting any other books done.22000:13:03.860 --> 00:13:05.980I'm just gonna focus on this one and see where it takes me.22100:13:06.280 --> 00:13:07.450And eventually at that point,22200:13:07.530 --> 00:13:10.930I realized that the reason I had had so much problem seeing what the arc was was22300:13:10.930 --> 00:13:13.530because it was an incredibly long book. And so I'd written, you know,22400:13:13.530 --> 00:13:16.17080,000 words, which is normally coming towards the end of a,22500:13:16.270 --> 00:13:19.690of a novel that I usually write. But that's really, I mean,22600:13:19.690 --> 00:13:22.330not even a third of the way through this one. So the,22700:13:22.470 --> 00:13:27.400the kind of character arc was just really getting going. And so, yeah,22800:13:27.400 --> 00:13:29.840I just loved writing it. So the character really drove that story.22900:13:30.360 --> 00:13:34.000I had a sense of what was going on with the, with the emperor. Um,23000:13:34.180 --> 00:13:36.720and I knew at some point he was gonna be leaving, you know,23100:13:36.720 --> 00:13:40.600there there's some elements there, but, um, but Clefa as a character,23200:13:40.600 --> 00:13:45.590just sort of shouldered his way into being sort of one of my favorites23300:13:45.590 --> 00:13:48.990and a, a really important person in my, in my stories.23400:13:50.310 --> 00:13:51.830I think it's a very good, um,23500:13:51.830 --> 00:13:56.390illustration of how it is that characters are the things that draw us to books,23600:13:57.530 --> 00:14:00.410um, because the, the,23700:14:00.510 --> 00:14:05.040the slice of one person's life through these momentous events is a really23800:14:05.040 --> 00:14:09.360fascinating one to take cuz he passes through the fall and the rebuilding23900:14:09.950 --> 00:14:14.160he's had his own personal journey, but no one which, which lots of people,24000:14:14.300 --> 00:14:16.280you could have written the book about his journey home.24100:14:16.820 --> 00:14:20.040He has his time in his life where he wants to go and find out someone to his24200:14:20.040 --> 00:14:22.270family, but nobody's interested.24300:14:23.090 --> 00:14:26.350So he only gets to tell it right later on in life.24400:14:27.050 --> 00:14:28.270And that itself is,24500:14:28.270 --> 00:14:33.090is a really fascinating sort of it's do it's dodging the most obvious,24600:14:33.090 --> 00:14:37.890like it's not a quest in that standard sense. It's not a there and back again,24700:14:38.350 --> 00:14:41.280uh, in, well, except I suppose it is. Uh,24800:14:41.660 --> 00:14:46.160but not in the sort of talking que setting out to find a dragon way. Um,24900:14:46.620 --> 00:14:48.320and what I've thought was25000:14:49.840 --> 00:14:53.960fabulous about it was the way that you are really expanding a sort of,25100:14:54.230 --> 00:14:58.520this is what fantasy can do. Um, and, and,25200:14:58.520 --> 00:15:01.720and finding a really original, uh, area to,25300:15:01.860 --> 00:15:06.760to explore the stuff between main events. Well,25400:15:06.760 --> 00:15:11.310main events are happening, but the focus is on the experience of a,25500:15:11.550 --> 00:15:14.670a man passing through those. So I would,25600:15:15.080 --> 00:15:18.670can't recommend it enough listeners go and you need a while.25700:15:19.190 --> 00:15:22.830I think I would say that, stick with it because I was,25800:15:22.950 --> 00:15:24.990I couldn't understand it to start with, well, why are we,25900:15:25.290 --> 00:15:27.150why are we on holiday with this guy? You know,26000:15:27.170 --> 00:15:31.140why have we started there and don't get it until you think, ah, okay.26100:15:31.840 --> 00:15:35.860And something really big happens where he takes a decision and that has the26200:15:35.860 --> 00:15:38.140consequences then kind of like the,26300:15:38.140 --> 00:15:42.860do the first domino that goes down and the rest of the book follows. So,26400:15:42.890 --> 00:15:44.020yeah. Fantastic.26500:15:44.970 --> 00:15:47.330Well, thank you. I think for me with that book,26600:15:47.430 --> 00:15:51.890one of the things I find it like that I just find endlessly fascinating too is,26700:15:52.910 --> 00:15:53.743and for me,26800:15:53.810 --> 00:15:58.730I feel like that question of you have a family that you love,26900:15:58.830 --> 00:16:01.770but you have a desire to go traveling or to go and do other things.27000:16:01.770 --> 00:16:05.440And they may or may not understand that is, you know, is, is a very true one.27100:16:05.730 --> 00:16:08.360We're not all orphans, you know, with Fs and whatnot.27200:16:08.360 --> 00:16:10.920Like you can just want to have those adventures. And that's something I,27300:16:11.040 --> 00:16:12.480I explore in different parts of my stories,27400:16:12.480 --> 00:16:15.200those kind of complicated families that, um,27500:16:16.910 --> 00:16:17.743that are there,27600:16:18.020 --> 00:16:21.920cuz I feel like I don't know the people who love their families and you can27700:16:21.920 --> 00:16:24.120still have a complicated relationship, no matter, you know,27800:16:24.120 --> 00:16:26.070if you love them and are loved by them very well,27900:16:26.770 --> 00:16:29.110but it doesn't stop you from having those desires,28000:16:29.110 --> 00:16:31.630but it makes them much more complicated. And I find that.28100:16:31.630 --> 00:16:33.470So like that's a thread through that story too,28200:16:33.690 --> 00:16:36.950and kind of found families as well and how that interacts with your,28300:16:37.220 --> 00:16:42.100with your biological family friendship is the themes that I find really28400:16:42.100 --> 00:16:42.933important too.28500:16:45.910 --> 00:16:49.060Thank you for listening to part one of this week's podcast.28600:16:49.930 --> 00:16:52.620Come back next week to hear part two.28700:16:53.910 --> 00:16:55.820Thank you for listening to myth makers.28800:17:02.870 --> 00:17:07.330Thanks for listening to mythmakers podcast brought to you by the28900:17:07.470 --> 00:17:12.210Oxford center for fantasy visit Oxford center for fantasy.org29000:17:12.390 --> 00:17:13.490to join in the fun.29100:17:14.080 --> 00:17:18.610Find out about our online courses in person stays in Oxford plus29200:17:18.860 --> 00:17:21.160visit our shop for great gifts.29300:17:21.750 --> 00:17:26.240Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts29400:17:26.510 --> 00:17:27.120worldwide.