Dispatches #1
The perils of YA fantasy, the merits of Netflix subtitles, and four leather perfumes
Welcome to Dispatches, a place where I talk about anything I’ve been ruminating on for the week.
What I’m Reading
Have you heard about the latest scandal on YA book twitter? They say that there’s a main character on twitter every day, and for at least one of them this week it was young adult fantasy author Emily Duncan. The harm she has caused and that other YA authors helped to enable is undeniable - she herself has admitted to it. But the wider conversation about her book series, Something Dark and Holy, took YA twitter to a place where it desperately needed to go: discussing the current trend in young adult fiction for the Eastern European based ‘Slavic’ fantasy.
This conversation was inevitable. Shadow and Bone, the Netflix series based on Leigh Bardugo’s popular Grishaverse books, is flicking the lights on and off like a poltergeist waiting for twitter to explode when it releases at the end of the month. The culture of YA twitter is unforgiving, brutal, and obsessed with exposing books and storylines that can be perceived as problematic. But the problem with Grisha and Something Dark and Holy is not about being problematic. It’s about who gets to be authentic.
When food empire Bon Appetit imploded last year, food writers started pointing out that BA was consistently whitewashing and appropriating food from other cultures. Nonwhite staff could pitch ideas using ingredients and recipes from their families or culture, but the executive at BA made the decision that their target demographic would feel more comfortable seeing these recipes coming from white editors and chefs. “It is almost always only white food writers, chefs, and recipe developers who get to adopt personas that go beyond their ethnicity.”
The Eastern European folklore based fantasy is having a vogue in young adult fiction. The genesis of these books was Cat Valente’s Deathless, after which came Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse, Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, Evelyn Skye’s The Crown’s Game, and eventually Duncan’s Wicked Saints. I am not Eastern European or Slavic; I can’t comment on whether or not these books are offensive or inappropriate. And I enjoyed reading many of these books. I have a lifelong interest in Eastern Europe, especially its history and folklore; this is a genre I should love wholeheartedly. But there is something uncomfortable about an entire subgenre of YA that is taking the history of a huge part of the world that is already tokenised and little understood in the West and saying it’s free real estate!
Duncan’s books are set in a fictional fantasy universe with two countries that, in her own words, simply are Poland and Russia. Let’s not get into the Americanness of it all, the arrogance in believing you could write a respectful fake Poland and Russia and manage to convey the incredibly complicated relationship between these two countries in a young adult novel. (Bear and the Nightingale cleverly avoided this by being set in actual historical Russia. The history was the context. Don’t try to worldbuild in 80,000 words, YA authors. We beg of you.)
There is something uncomfortable in the objectification of it, making very real countries into fake fantastical worlds. It’s exotification but it’s not meant to seem that way because it’s Europe - but it’s so different from us, so unreal, it’s practically fantasy. This is the latest iteration in a long tradition of the West othering Eastern Europe. It is an ugly mentality born out of fear that has very real implications.
In the era of #ownvoices the white YA author looks, as her ancestors have done many times before, to the East for inspiration. But just because the cultures in these countries are not another ethnicity does not mean you have carte blanche to blunder through a clumsy story where you pick and mix elements of a very real and living culture. Any publishing house that does not hire sensitivity readers is all but asking for a scandal like this for one of their authors.
In her apology, Duncan stated that she knew there were antisemitic elements in her story, and “did recognize the significance while researching and tried to handle this in a sensitive way”. What’s worse: setting a book in the Pale of Settlement and not thinking about the implications of a blood libel storyline, or being completely aware and thinking you could still pull it off anyway?
This is what happens when you try to aestheticise entire histories and regions of the world. You are monetising a culture that you are not entitled to advocate for. Which YA authors get to adopt personas that go beyond their ethnicity? I think we already know.
Maybe there is no point in talking about authenticity when it comes to YA. Maybe as a genre it serves its purpose: a jumping point for younger readers to be exposed to different histories and cultures, to become engaged and curious to learn more. My own interest in Eastern Europe began when I was 5 and I watched Anastasia, perhaps the Young Adultiest movie ever made. The 90’s and the collapse of communism brought the first big wave of interest in the Eastern Europe of yore in the West. There were plenty of middle grade books set in Imperial Russia that I inhaled as a child - The Royal Diaries especially. None of these books were cultural touchstones.
But there is a difference between a white American writing a story based on Cinderella, or the Bible, or any of the literature and folklore that is a part of the fabric of our civilisation. We live here and we can and should investigate these stories, dismantle them, examine how they reflect in society and impact our lives. We do not have the same entitlement to the history and culture of other civilisations, even if they are also white.
Perhaps the difference is that I am older and can call a spade a spade. Or perhaps it is that the institution that is YA - the authors, the publishers, the goodreads reviewers, the twitter masses - are so adamant about representation being important, about authenticity being important. It matters who writes the stories. And yet authors like Emily Duncan continue to be successful with their fake Polands and their Potemkin Russias.
I’m too old for young adult now. But we’re all too old for this.
I am not reading Wicked Saints. I am going to read We Hunt The Flame by Hafsah Faizal and reread Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, and continue to hope that someday my wish will come true and someone will translate The Sorcerer’s Daughter by Irina Izmailova. Or, as YA twitter would call it, the 100k enemies to lovers Swan Lake AU.
What I’m Watching
The latest tv show I finished was The Irregulars on Netflix, a humdrum Sherlock Holmes: for the kids! potboiler about which there is nothing particularly interesting to say. I am also on tenterhooks for Line of Duty every week. That show is going to give me a stress disorder.
I am currently watching a kdrama called Tale of the Nine-Tailed. It is delightful in the way that many kdramas are; there is no cloak-and-dagger about the fact that the two leads are going to fall in love and you’re going to enjoy every minute. It is also wonderful because it is one of many kdramas I have watched where the main character is a centuries old immortal who is either waiting for their true love to return or waiting to meet their true love so they can, at last, die. Kdramas are so good at making the supernatural seem very mundane. I mean this in the best way. The main character of this show is a thousand year old fox god. A significant portion of the first episode was about him getting dressed for work and eating mint choc chip ice cream.
Shows like Tale of the Nine Tailed are why I'll probably never cancel my Netflix subscription. For me its appeal lies in the non-English content it provides, whether it be Netflix funded projects or television shows from other countries that Netflix has captioned. If Netflix was simply a subtitling service I feel like I would still get my money's worth out of it. There is something refreshing and wonderful about watching shows that are not American, not from the Western perspective. I loved that when I was 12 and running out our internet watching episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist split into 10 minute segments on youtube, and I love it now with an entire to-watch list from Netflix's international category.
What I’m Smelling
This was a good week because samples came in the mail. I try to limit myself with samples because I know I can go overboard and want to put a batch on all at once, to the immense horror of the people who live with me. I just got samples for Easter that I’m still working through but I was excited for these. There’s only four, and only two of the scents are new to me.
The first, Bentley for Men Intense, has the gall to be a perfume made for a car company that is meant to smell wonderful. It’s a cheapie - less than $50 for 100ml - and it’s made by Nathalie Lorson, the perfumer who made amongst other things Black Opium. She’s incredibly talented, especially at the lower price point, and she made Encre Noire which is the second best vetiver perfume in the world. Bentley For Men Intense ended up smelling quite similar to Burberry London for Men, which is a charming budget scent that layers a fresh opening over a warm spice-tobacco base that many people wear at Christmastime. I can’t decide if I like it or not. This one merits further investigation.
The second sample is Spanish Leather by Geo F. Trumper. It is absolutely horrid. I sprayed it on my left arm and after 20 minutes couldn’t bear it any more and had to douse myself in a shower to wash it off. The original scent was made as an aftershave splash in 1902. The current sample I have has probably been reformulated and reworked a hundred times since then. It takes all the powdery elements of geranium, rose, patchouli, and birch tar and uses them to amplify each other. The result can only be described as the scent of a bar of soap a soldier kept in his rucksack as he staked out a place in the trench at the Somme. Vintage in the worst way.
The last two samples are perfumes I know, love, and want to have decants of. The first is Fahrenheit by Dior, the first and greatest of the violet leaf perfumes. Violet leaf is a loud, almost stomach churning note that to my nose smells wonderfully of hot plastic or burning rubber. It does not, by any means, smell of violets. The most famous perfume with a violet leaf note currently is Santal 33, but Santal 33 tries to warm the violet leaf with sandalwood and spices, and ends up with something that smells like warm yeast. Fahrenheit lets this brutal and disturbing note take center stage, nudging it closer to a traditional aromatic fougere base. Yes, it smells like someone set Drakkar Noir on fire. Yes, it is sublime. Fahrenheit is also the perfume worn by Big from Sex and the City. I don’t know where I heard this or why I have remembered it all these years, but I think of it every time I spray this violet leaf burning rubber 80’s abomination fougere darling. That’s jazz, kid.
The last is the very next perfume on my to-buy list: Ombre Leather by Tom Ford. I have had many decants of this scent, and I wager I will have a few more. I have long struggled with leather notes in perfumery. The traditional leather accord - Cuir de Russie - is made of birch tar. Russian fur trappers would use birch tar to cure leather hides to make them stable for travel, and scent became synonymous with leather in Europe. This note reads incredibly powdery to my nose, and nothing like the smell of leather that I am familiar with - the new handbag, the expensive shoes, the seat of the car on a hot day. That leather smells sweet but also like hot glue and melting plastic, and that is the smell of Ombre Leather. There is no violet leaf listed in the notes here but I certainly smell it in the opening blast, which can only be described as bracing. This is not the leather of birch tar, or even the forbidding cypress drenched Tuscan Leather that Ford released in 2007 - Ombre Leather smells like a new handbag. It smells plasticy, processed, a way a human should not ever smell, and I love it. I believe this is due to a synthetic oakmoss - there is something in Ombre Leather that is similar to Chloe’s Nomade, a designer perfume that showcases the best that new oakmoss alternatives have to offer. The drydown becomes much tamer, even pleasant - my family, used to smelling the usual confronting scents I enjoy, shrugged their shoulders and said ‘It smells generic, like something from the department store.’ But I adore Ombre Leather. It further goes to prove my long-held belief that Tom Ford’s Signature Line contains all of the brand’s true ingenuity and the Private Line is overpriced, underwhelming drivel. Ford’s scents are all created at Givaudan, and Ombre Leather was created by Sonia Constant. Whatever new oakmoss she threw into this scent is an absolute stunner. Far and away the best leather I’ve ever smelled.
In Other News
I want to get this totally garish fake Caboodle container for my perfume samples. It’s so 90’s in the worst way, glitter and clear like the Gameboy my sister used to have. Y2K kitsch.
Cover image is The Flying Carpet by Viktor Vasnetsov (1880). I love Vasnetsov’s work - he was an academic artist who painted what he loved, and the man just adored Russian folklore. Absolutely crackers about it. His Ivan Tsarevich Riding The Grey Wolf is also the perfect phone lockscreen. I dream about visiting the Vasnetsov Museum in Moscow to see his work, and other works of Russian iconography and art.
The current state of the nation in regards to Superman content is so, so dire. I’m still processing the Snyder cut and Superman and Lois is on break until May so the CW can burn off the rest of Supergirl, another one of their shows long past its due date. Surely the future Eric Kripke sees for superheroes is not what we’re going to have to live with for twenty years? Only content from this artist’s twitter brings me joy.
Amouage has two new scents out in a few weeks. I look forward to the endless youtube content the fragrance community will eke out of them.
I wrote more about the fake Russias of YA in my review of The Bear and the Nightingale, which I really did enjoy, and more about perfume in an essay review of Chanel’s Le Lion.
That’s all for now!