User:LEvalyn/Sandbox

Hollywood as fairyland

"the vision of Hollywood as a kind of halluci­nogenic inferno of ambition, lust, corrup­tion, and betrayal" "there are two kinds of actors: the stars and the burnouts. The stars are the rarefied few who, through shrewdness or seduction or sheer luck, ascend to the heights of fame and fortune. Most flame out." "Vo layers her historical fantasy fiction with biting critiques."

"So during one late night online chat with my friend Grace, I apparently just started musing about how Hollywood, especially during the thirties, was just Fairyland, with its promises of immortality and beauty, its penchant for stealing names and faces, the prevalence of bets you can’t win unless you can and some really, really dark underpinnings."

"take history and imbue it with elaborate yet grounded fantasy that feels at once shocking and intimate. No matter how strange or frightening, it still feels real in that curiously contradictory way only speculative fiction can manage."

"That she hopes to escape from the limiting roles her own world offers her by fitting herself into fictional roles scripted by prejudiced men with profit in mind is a driving tension of the book. Luli Wei, as she comes to be known professionally, prides herself on her practicality and clarity of vision, but her steely ambition cannot be untangled from her bottomless, sincere love of the movies."

"All of this sounds terribly allegorical, and in a sense it is."

Multiple fantasy influences

"Vo’s deployment of fantasy is refreshingly ecumenical." "creating ghost dolls using a combination of Chinese tradition and Colorado ‘‘mountain lore.’’ That Swedish actress roommate turns out to be a Skogsrå, a kind of forest spirit born with a cow’s tail" "The magic of both worlds functions similarly, in that it exists as a sort of unknowable, uncontainable force. The Wild Hunt stalks the studio lot on Friday nights. Luli trades months and years of her life for a taste of stardom. Her best friend is a Nordic cow-like forest spirit trapped in the dry Southern California sun. There are childlike changelings, living dolls, and doors to other worlds. Magic in these stories is an almost tangible thing:"

mention the bonfires here since I am cutting them from the plot summary

Maybe also something about horror influence? "Siren Queen is packed full of such Shirley Jackson–esque details, so that neither the reader nor Luli is ever able to forget the very real, very sinister danger that awaits her"

Outsider status and monstrosity

"Filled with vivid scenes of female rage and queer love," "Blending themes of racism, erasure, and LGBTQ+ discrimination in 1920s Hollywood" "This is a book that dwells somewhere between satire and horror, and situated firmly within queerness." "Themes of racism, privilege, and Chinese labor exist on every level of Siren Queen. Vo captures both the pain and struggle of being a person of color. There’s the constant drive to be perfect, and unlike every other person who looks a little like you, tangled with the weight of constantly not wanting to make a fuss or stand out. Luli doesn’t so much as balance between these two extremes but dances back and forth between them. The theme that speaks the loudest to me throughout most of the book is of finding queer community and living in a way that aligns with who you want. Luli finds her people quickly, but community comes at a price. Vo does an excellent job at depicting both physically and emotionally what it’s like being in queer spaces with other queer people and identifying it as a safe place—well, safe for some."

"Vo shows us a world...that offers very few good choices, and the characters must choose what parts of themselves they’re willing to give up. Having it all was never an option."

"Luli’s monstrosity is inherent to her identity as an ambitious woman of color and daughter of immigrants. By refusing to accept the thin, confining space offered to people like her, Luli forces that space to broaden, forces her industry to make room for her. ... Nor can her own conscience ever be clear, as her career is predicated on a—there’s no other word for it—monstrous theft that she perpetrates against her own sister." <-- in general this source is useful for spelling out specific plot points that constitute monstrous sacrifices, so they can be mentioned without citing to the novel