Blame Montefeltro. A post like this is from time to time quite fun, and real life has been in the way lately. Something meatier soon.
Thriller of Manners: Crime's like anything else, really. It has rules - quite strict ones, with lots of people who'll be shocked if you break them - right up until it doesn't.
Robinsonade of Manners: Trapped on a desolate isle and forced to contemplate his own isolation and the course of his life thus far, a castaway is obliged to fabricate an all-encompassing etiquette manual from scratch in order to rebuild his life and enable him to re-enter Society when rescue finally comes.
Urban Fantasy of Manners: I learnt it the hard way - when on your first date with that vampire with the tousled hair and the leather jacket and the beauty spot, don't order the steak tartare.
Bedroom Farce of Manners: "Gentlemen, now we have found ourselves all in the same lady's wardrobe, how exactly are we to pass the time? There is the signal possibility that we will be here for a while."
Solarpunk of Manners: In the pastel-shaded environmentally-friendly egalitarian neo-tribal future, is there a polite way to say that the neighbour's hollyhocks are overshadowing your solar panels?
Ostern of Manners: In the remote reaches of Pseudobaninsky Oblast, there's a band of desperate men: Tsarist lickspittles, quarrelsome treacherous profit-seeking capitalists, long-winded long-bearded priests - with minds as tangled as their whiskers. Then there's the man who has come to show them a new way to live.
Submarine Film of Manners: "Cursing like a sailor? Lady, when you are obliged to spend life in close proximity with a double-dozen of your fellows in a tin can built for ten, I assure you that you will develop a very delicate set of customs."
Southern Ontario Gothic of Manners: In the worn Victorian residential quarter of Roxburghe, ON, we are supported - or perhaps impaled - by three pillars. Our British legacy, the frigid Northern weather and the continually twined sight of squalor and prosperity across the border. Nursing these delightful wounds, my fellow petite Roxbourgeoisie have produced a certain strain of propriety suited for scab-picking on Sunday afternoons.....
What else is there? Contributions welcome.
Ergodic Literature of Manners: At what point is it polite to put the book down? Do you know if the characters can continue their weird half-life without you to observe their outlandish behaviour? How will the author feel, how the narrator? Are you even a reader or just a well-behaved character in the meta story?
ReplyDeleteIt would be bad manners to look for too long, but what would become of them if I didn't look at all?
DeleteVery good!
ReplyDeleteGrimdark of Manners: Rogar Bastard-Flayer glowered across the table at his arch-rival, Baroness Blackheart, who responded with a sadistic grin. "I'll tell you what happened to your son," she sneered, "but don't you want to finish your stew first? I think you'll find the meat is particularly... tender." Rogar tried to quell his misgivings and go on with the meal, but suddenly he began to choke in horror; not only was the baroness sipping from the front end of her soup spoon - rather than the side - but she was actually blowing on it. "You go too far," he snarled, lunging forward to stab her through the windpipe with a fish knife.
That vein of black humour is perfect for some early grimdark.
DeleteIsekai of manners: "These green-sun people, though cultured in their own way, have never even heard of Oscar Wilde. I have already become the premier wit of the court of Jantoom simply by recycling the master's better-remembered bons mots."
ReplyDeleteDidn't Heinlein have that happen once or twice?
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