Game of Thrones - Latest Report

About three-quarters in, and I've had to eat my words with one of my friends who likes giving me crap.  I like this damn book.  I don't know why.  No, I do know - Tyrion.  And Daenaerys.  I still don't like Bran.  DON'T GIVE ME THAT.  Yeah, he's paralyzed.  You think he wants your pity?  He doesn't have mine.  He's not going to die.  You can practically see the plot armor.  He's probably touched by the gods, too.  My hypothesis is that he is the seven-year-old kid that seven-year-old Martin wished he had been - bold and adventurous, staying strong through heavy burdens, chosen for a special destiny.

Samwise Gamgee Samwell Tarly, on the other hand, is Martin's author avatar, where he admits "This is what would really happen if I were in one of my own stories."  To be fair, that is what would happen to most of us.  I mean, I fence, but I know modern Olympic-style sport fencing.  I'd get slaughtered.

Speaking of being slaughtered, I know Martin has a reputation for killing popular characters, but so far the only characters to die have just made me think "expendable tourist." (OMT)

I just know he's going to kill Tyrion.  Tyrion is the only character who is not boring or a complete asshole.  Tyrion has his own priorities, and isn't wrapped up in being noble and saving the realm.  And he's a badass dwarf.  How many fantasy stories - any stories - have a badass dwarf that that isn't from a dwarf-people?

I just realized that Martin was having a joke in that one scene where Tyrion was forced to fight with an axe...

Tyrion looks out for Tyrion, and Tyrion keeps himself to his standards.  He's not bad.  He's not good.  He's just himself, and I think it is more important (and interesting) to be yourself than to try to be what you're supposed to be.

Dany has that going for her too.  She's supposed to be the meek, submissive child-bride, but then she decides she's taken enough crap, and she's going to take over the kingdoms.

Arya is not this type of character.  Sure she learns to use a sword and defies her role as a gentle lady, but she is still concerned with being noble and good and whatever.

Still, I haven't been swearing at the book much at all anymore.

Just a few more little complaints.

1.  The f'ing "Common Tongue."  There is no language in the history of language that has ever been called the "Common Tongue."  If one particular country that speaks one particular language becomes a really big trade powerhouse, then that language becomes dominant in the world and people learn it as a second language to communicate with many cultures, rather than trying to learn three or four languages.  Even Esperanto had a proper name - and look how many people speak it now, anyway.  But somehow, fantasy writers are too lazy to come up with an ethnic name for language, so they call the language of the patriarchal white pseudo-Europeans the "Common Tongue."

2.  The king is never evil.  Seriously.  When a kingdom goes to shit, it's always the evil queen, or the evil minister, but evil kings are fought in battle - they don't actually run kingdoms. Kings can be weak or misled, but never evil.

It doesn't sound like I'm actually enjoying the book much, does it?  I'm not.  I just can't stop reading it anymore.  And I was sad when Lady died.  Then I was pissed because Arya had to lose Nymeria, and it was like "Oh, right, none of the girls get to be followed around by a big badass wolf, even though the three-year-old boy gets one."

And then Tyrion got thrown in a dungeon, and I was quite distressed about that, because shoot, Tyrion's the best part of this book.  And I've been catching myself having "What's going to happen next?" moments, like after Robert dies.

Maybe a final post on this once I finish the book.  Or maybe I'll find something new and interesting to blab about.

The Trouble with Tomboys

Eleven chapters into Game of Thrones now.  It's actually turning out to be quite tolerable.  I've only cursed at it twice since my last rant.

I did get to Arya, though.  The tomboy princess.  Which has sparked another rant.

Arya, you see, is terrible at embroidery, and all girly things. She is not conventionally pretty.  She is good at riding and math, and wants to learn to use a sword. 

Arya is a strongfemalecharacter written by a straightwhiteman.

I am not saying that straight white men cannot write strong female characters - case in point Joss Whedon.  But there are a few things to keep in mind when writing them.

1.  Don't define them solely by their femininity

Arya's main defining characteristic is that she is a girl who likes boy things.  This is the same problem I have with crossdressing - the strongfemalecharacter is strong because she takes on a masculine role.  That is not feminism.  All that does is reinforce gender binaries and male supremacy.

2.  Don't ignore her femininity

The fact that Arya has to be bad at embroidery to be good with a sword (presumeably) bothers me.  I crochet.  I also fence.  You can have both!  This goes back to the binary - because Arya likes boy things, she can't like girl things.  I am also irked by the fact that no writer has ever had the balls to go ahead and make the princess a transman.  Or at least a dyke.  Something other than falling prey to compulsory heterosexuality.

Okay, yes, Arya lives in a patriarchal medieval society, and I think she ends up in an arranged marriage later, so I'm going to set her aside for a moment and look at other tomboy princesses.

1.  Eilonwy, from the Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander

Eilonwy is also better at swordplay than embroidery - at least, she has more fun with it.  She is not played off as a master swordswoman, though; she just likes adventuring.  And she's fun.  She's the sharp-tongued, practical wit, who comes up with weird analogies for everything.  Arya is a girl who likes boy things.  See the difference? 

In the end, though, Eilonwy marries Taran out of literary convention. 

2.  Suzy Turquoise Blue, from The Keys to the Kingdom, by Garth Nix

Suzy's also kind of an Eilonwy.  Not a princess, though.  More practical than witty, and wonderfully irreverent.  She is not girly, but not because she is masculine.  She just is.

And actually, she doesn't hook up with anyone.  Then again, she's like ten, and it's a kids book.

3.  Elayne, from The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan

I could also have gone with Egwene, but I'm trying to stick with the princess theme.  She becomes a badass mother (no, literally), queen, and mage.  All perfectly within her reach as a princess, without crossdressing or being "masculine."  Though she does start swearing like a soldier to get man-cred.

Sort averts CH?  There's some polyamory going on.

4.  Isodel, from Year of the Griffin, by Diana Wynne Jones

I'm reaching a little with this one.  Isodel is conventionally pretty and unconventionally badass.  I mean, she rides a dragon.  Not as part of a scheme to save the world, he just kind of fell platonically in love with her.  Everyone kind of falls in love with her.

She falls in love at first sight with Emperor Titus.  It's Jones, so it's sort of a parody. All of her romantic subplots go like, pretty much.  No fuss, no bother.

5.  Millie, from The Lives of Christopher Chant, by Diana Wynne Jones

Technically a priestess/goddess rather than a princess.  Very powerful enchantress.  Decides to escape oppressive temple life to become a British schoolgirl. Can you get much girlier than that?

Marries Christopher when they are much older.

6.  Everyone with a vagina (and then some!) in The Last Rune, by Mark Anthony

Seriously.  There are two queens in book one, neither of which rule over a matriarchy (I think it's insulting to say that the only way a woman can rule is if the ruler has to be a woman).  Plus, the main female lead gets mistaken for a duchess, and is bad at embroidery because she is from the modern world where people don't do that anymore, not because she rejects feminine things; and her best friend is a baroness who practically runs a castle as part of her gender role, helps the heros save the world a million times, and eventually becomes a queen in her own right.  Not to mention that there are female VILLAINS.  I mean, how awesome is it that you have so many strong female characters that you don't worry that having female villains is going to put a negative portrayal of women in your book?

Aryn, the baroness, has to marry a prince to become queen, but it is also clear that he had to marry her for the populace to accept him as king, and the Final Battle is coming so they need a strong leader NOW.  They don't love each other, but it's implied they learn to like each other.

7.  Rapunzel from Tangled

Yeah, it's a movie.  It's also past midnight and I did not start out intending to make a top ten list.  I think I'll cut it at eight.  But she's a flippin' Disney princess - girly girl icon.  But she has personality beyond her gender, and she is interesting and fun.  Also, remember what I said about female villains?

So she marries a prince in the end.  It's a Disney movie.  And they actually had good chemistry, as opposed to, say, Arial, who never actually talked to her prince. 

8.  Tek, from the Firebringer Trilogy, by Meredith Ann Pierce

Yeah, I'm really tired now.  Tek's a unicorn princess.  Actually, she's not actually a princess, but she marries a prince.  And then she finds out she's actually the king's daughter, and they have an incest scare, but then it turns out the prince isn't the king's son (sorry, spoiler).  She's a badass warrior, kind of Nala-like in that she can kick the prince's ass (hmm, Nala's another good one), but unicorn society doesn't exactly have gender roles, so in-universe, her warrior skills have nothing to do with her female-ness.  Out of 'verse, however, they give her traditionally masculine characteristics, while the prince is the more "feminine" sensitive peacemaker type.  But it's not over-the-top, and I like her.

Like I said, marries the prince.  CompHet.  It's not a married-ever-after, though; it happens at the beginning of book 2.  So they have an actual relationship as a married couple.

I need to stop now before I stop making sense.  Basically, Arya bugs me because she is flat, and Martin doesn't know how to write women.  The End.

Queering Epic Fantasy - Anthony vs. Martin, Part 2

I didn't even get to the queer stuff yesterday, did I?  I probably won't get to it today either.

I'm going to talk about food.

I am also going to cheat on my five-chapter limit, but it's for good reason.

Here is Martin's description of a feast:

"The Great Hall of Winterfell was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smell of roasted meat and fresh-baked bread.  Its grey stone walls were draped with banners.  White, gold, crimson:  the direwolf of Stark, Baratheon's crowned stag, the lion of Lannister.  A singer was playing the high harp and reciting a ballad, but down at this end of the hall his voice could scarcely be heard above the roar of the fire, the clangor of pewter plates and cups, and the low mutter of a hundred drunken conversations."

Here is Anthony's description of a feast:


"The great hall of Calavere had been decorated to resemble a winter forest.  Boughs of evergreen and holly hung from soot-blackened beams high above, and more had been heaped along the base of the walls.  Their icy scent mingled with the smoke of torches.  Leafless saplings stood in the corners of the hall, to suggest the edges of a sylvan glade, and even the tapestries on the walls added to the illusion with their scenes of stag hunts and forest revels, woven in colors made dim and rich with time."

What I'm getting from this is:  If you are going to write epic fantasy, and you have to describe a feast, you must always start with "The great hall of X..."

But seriously.  Where would you rather be?  Winterfell or Calavere?  My take on Martin - and one of the reasons I don't like him - is that his fantasyland is very generic.  Who is the singer and how did he get there?  What is he singing about?  Who cares?  It's a medieval feast, and they have bards and shit there, don't they?

It looks like I am going to get to queer stuff today after all.

One of the reasons Anthony is much more detailed in his description of castle life is because he has quite a few female characters.  The king's ward practically runs the castle - including preparations for feasts.  Who put together the Winterfell feast?  The wife, whatsername, Catelyn?  She doesn't seem to have much imagination.  Or maybe it was planned out by a man.  That would explain a lot.

Martin's female characters are annoying me five chapters (and one episode of the show) in.  We have the supportive wife, the victimized child-bride, and the tomboy princess (though I have heard that the child-bride takes a level in badass later, so I promise I'll read a few more chapters after this rant).  So - we have one woman whose strength is being married to a strong man and making him stronger, we have one woman who is completely dominated by the heteropatriarchy, and we have one who takes on a male role in order to gain power.

Anthony's world is also quite male-dominated, but he uses the patriarchy to ask questions about power and gender relations.  He has not one but two queens, neither of which rule over a matriarchy.  He has no crossdressers.  And yes, the Witches are a big equalizing factor in his world, but it is not so much a matter of giving women power as giving women space.  Martin has yet to pass the Bechdel test.  Okay, so Anthony takes until chapter 9, and then it's a cryptic warning and not really a conversation, but once you get more than one female character, he really takes off.

So the reason I like Anthony and not Martin is that Anthony's writing is queer.  I'm not talking about his order of gay knights, or his gay protagonist, or his representation of every letter in the LGBTQetc. acronym.  Anthony is queer because he gives attention to issues of power and privilege, so that his almost stereotypical quest arc becomes fresh and exciting because it is seen through a different lens.

Now it's time for five more chapters of Martin.  Maybe I'll have another rant by then.

Queering Epic Fantasy: A critical comparison between "Game of Thrones" and "Beyond the Pale." Part One.

If you're read any of my other posts on this blog, you know that I am obsessed with this obscure fantasy series by a guy named Mark Anthony (not the singer) called "The Last Rune."  I am not unbiased.

But I can't stand Game of Thrones.

I don't know why.  Sure, he has a massive cast, and I can't seem to care about any of them, and everyone in the prologue dies, and it's very hetero-European-centric.  And it doesn't have a Dark Lord, while Anthony does, and there are certain storytelling conventions that make me think that Anthony was in some ways influenced by Martin (it's plausible - Thrones came out in 1996 and Pale was published in 1998).  And we certainly cannot disregard the effect of nostalgia goggles.

So what is so different about the two books?

I have only read the first five chapters of Thrones, so I will limit my text citations of Anthony to the first five chapters of Beyond the Pale.

Let's start with the first line of the prologue.

Thrones:  "We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them.  "The wildlings are dead."

Pale:  The derelict school bus blew into town with the last midnight gale of October.

What can we deduce from this?  Well, Thrones tells us immediately that there are going to be weird names of pseudo-European fantasyland tradition.  Seriously, have you noticed that nearly every fantasy novel has a character named "Gareth"?  "Gared" tells me that he is going to do a lot of re-spelling, which is possibly even more annoying than scrabble-bag names.

What else?  Starting the story at dusk gives a sense of darkness and foreboding and spooky things; like the start of a horror movie.  But WTF is a wildling?  That's not explained until the next chapter; instead, the author spends a great deal of time describing the characters' clothes.

Now in Pale, we see we are in the real world with school buses and Octobers.  We can see the scene, instead of trying to imagine some dude named Gared in some kind of wood with some other people.  The question that keeps you reading, then, is not "What is going on?" but "Why is the school bus blowing into town at midnight?"  Obviously, Martin does not have that luxury, but half the time I feel like he does not explain things enough, and the other half I am frustrated by him giving too much detail and name-dropping.

The rest of the prologues are as follows:  In Thrones, the viewpoint is actually held by Will, but they all get killed by spooky zombie-things so it doesn't really matter; you never really get a sense of the characters, so you don't really care that they're dead.  In Pale, a creepy preacher-like figure oversees a troupe of faerie-like beings raise a tent (for some reason my mental image always looks like that one scene in Dumbo) to host "Brother Cy's Travelling Salvation Show."  You can tell no one here is a real viewpoint character; they are kept distant, mysterious, not someone you connect to but someone you wonder at.  The prologue is quite different from the rest of the chapters; which is why it is a prologue and not a first chapter where everyone dies.  Also, the preacher reappears in chapter two, so he isn't completely forgotten.  He's relevant, just not a viewpoint character.

Now for the first line of Chapter One.

Thrones:  The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer.

Pale:  Sometimes the wind blowing down from the mountains made Travis Wilder feel like anything could happen.

There's no contest here - a description of the weather, or an introduction into the main character's soul.  Ugh,  okay, I'll try for less bias.  Autumn signifies dying things, and adds to the foreboding of the prologue.  The chapter also details a seven year old boy witnessing his first execution, and so it can also signify and end to childhood innocence.  But that's a cheap metaphor.  Wind as a vehicle for infinite possibilities is not something you see every day.

Now, in the first five chapters of Thrones, there are five different viewpoint characters; I believe there are a total of seven in the book.  In the first five of Pale, there is one, with a total of two main ones and a few glimpses of others in the climax toward the end.

On page one of Thrones, we are introduced to six characters:  Bran, Robb, Mance Rayder, Old Nan, Jon, the man that gets killed.  On page two we get Eddard Stark, Theon Greyjoy, Jory Cassel, and Robert.  Also, I can't find anywhere that explicitly says that Robb is Bran's brother.  Yes, there is a character list in the back, but I'm trying to get into the story, and I'm trying to focus on Bran, and there are all these names distracting me.

Pale does not introduce anyone besides Travis until three pages in, for a total of three:  Travis, Moira Larsen, who is not important, and Max, who is.  Moira Larsen is introduced as Travis, a saloonkeeper, is worried about being late for work and having to face irate patrons.  Max is his one employee.  I'm still fuzzy on who half the names in Thrones are.

I think the fundamental difference in the structure of the two books is that Martin takes a broad sweep of his story, introducing the setting and the people, and telling the story after the stage has been set.  Anthony introduces Travis, and pulls him into the story once we know him.

Anthony is also quicker on the action.  By the end of chapter five, we have already had our first incident, complete with fire and danger and strange beings.  Prologue of Thrones does not count as an incident because it doesn't connect to a recurring character.  Five chapters in, it looks like some kind of fantasyland family drama.  It's a soap opera.  The characters are shallow enough.

I have so much more to say on these books.  So much that I think I'm going to break it up into multiple posts.  Tomorrow:  Feasts and castles!  After that, I might actually get to the queer theory component.

Why America is Number One

Disclaimer:  The title is sarcastic.

I've been watching a lot of Olympics lately - that's the only sort of sports this hipster will watch.  And yeah, the idea that if we all get together and play sports every four/two years, we'll get rid of war and all live together in peace is stupid and naive.  But I like that (for the most part), the Olympics are a time when the world can gather together and celebrate our common humanity by kicking each other's asses at sports.

Watching the Olympics, it's hard not to notice that America always gets the most medals (unless China beats us).  It's great for our national pride and convincing us that we are simply better than other countries.  Obviously, that's not true, but it still begs the question, why does America win at everything (except table tennis and handball)?

1.  Size

First of all, America is a big country.  Note that our main rival in the medal count is China.  If, say, 1% of the world's population is a potential Olympic athlete, then there are going to be a lot more in the USA than say, Grenada (who just won their first Olympic medal thanks to runner Kirani James).

So then why is India not up there in the medal count, while countries like Germany, Japan, and of course Great Britain, are?  The answer, with my new background in queer theory and attention to marginalization issues, is simple.

2.  Economics

Now, hold on a second, my patriotic fellow citizens object.  Money can't buy talent!  Well, no...but it takes money to foster talent.  It takes money to be able to have the leisure time to practice a sport, rather than try to eke out a living.  It takes money to buy equipment, and it takes money to hire a coach.  It takes more money to hire a better coach.  The American runner with no legs?  A wonderful success story, but what do those prosthetics cost in a country that until recently had no federal healthcare?

[Edit:  I'm stupid.  He's from South Africa.  A white man from South Africa.  So concepts of racial and economic privilege still apply; just ignore what I said about healthcare.]
3.  The Land of Opportunity?

American also attracts athletes and coaches from other countries.  Did you hear about the Cameroonians who went missing?  Cameroon has an estimated 30% unemployment rate.  Can you blame them for wanting to get the hell out?  Also, there is a recurring story of "This athlete trains in the US, but competes with her/his home country for the Olympics."  I believe that is the case with Kirani James.  I wonder, though, how many athletes don't go back to their home country?  How many coaches take jobs in America because that is where they can get the best facilities and the most economic support?

I started out with a very pessimistic intent to claim that America was buying Olympic gold, and that the world has been corrupted by unchecked capitalism (don't get me wrong, I love capitalism, but no system is perfect).  But it occurred to me that yes, we have better economic opportunities for athletes than other countries - and is that really so terrible?  I'm fully cynical when it comes to the American dream, but we have created a country where it is relatively easy to become an Olympic athlete, as long as you have the talent and the drive.  And certainly we have people held back by economic circumstances even within this country (again, cynical of American dream), but the fact that we have as much space as we do to create Olympic athletes...it really doesn't seem so terrible, from that angle.

So what am I to do?  I suppose that if warring countries can compete side-by-side peacefully, I can let my cynicism and idealism coexist peacefully.

Now it's time to go back to watching the Games.  And the Croatian water polo team.  (Yes, I'm a lesbian, but those speedos...LOL.)

History Project - 1979: Tales of Neveryon

I need to come up for a more concise name for what I'm doing that "Queer Fantasy History Project."
"Tales of Neveryon" is a book by Samuel R. Delany that consists of five tales and an appendix (it's one of those books where the appendix is part of the story).  The tales all take place in the same fictional kingdom of Neveryon, a proto-civilization, pseudo-Mesopotamian sword-and-soceryland.  The tales share a few characters and in the last tale pulls all the plots together in complicated and interesting ways.

The story behind the story:  Neveryon was on my list for vintage queer fantasy I needed to read, and I finally tracked it down at a used bookstore.  On that same trip I bought "Nocturne," partly because I have been trying to finish the Indigo books, and partly because I did not want to buy only that book with that cover.

I.  The Tale of Gorgik

Gorgik is a slave, who finds favor with a noblewoman (yes, I do mean sex) and ends up not only freed but becomes very successful in the military.  Right away you can tell this is not your typical post-Tolkien sword-and-sorcery. There is a lot of class commentary and power relations.  Oh, and Delany is African-American.  Matters of race and slavery come up a lot in his books.  Just saying.

He's also gay, and I heard that there is quite a bit of queer content in the Neveryon books (which is why I tracked it down for the history project).  All that I could find from Gorgik was mention of male prostitutes in the scenery, implication that the eunuch servant has sex with men, and implication that Gorgik has sex with a guy, or at least that a guy approached him for sexual favors.

II.  The Tale of Old Venn

This is the tale which blew my mind a little.  I mean, to all appearances (namely, the scantily clad people on the cover) it's a tpyical 70's sword-and-sorcery book.  Then it starts to ask quesions about gender roles and the origin of prejudice and Freudian theory and the effect money has on society.  Somehow, it does not come off as didactic, even though the format is mostly an old woman giving lessons to a group of children.

This story is not queer in the sense of homosexuality, but Old Venn does have some stories of her time as a wife in a not-your-typical-polygamist-society.  Instead of the women being property of the men, the man is the property of the women; until that sociey was introduced to money, which skewed things into a patriarchy, by ways that really do make sense but are a bit complicated for a blog post.

III.  The Tale of Small Sarg

Now it gets gay.  Sarg is a barbarian prince, "which meant that his mother's brother wore women's jewelry and was consulted about animals and sickness."  Sarg himself also has the opportunity to assume such an office (the barbarians seem to be some sort of matriarchy), but prefers not to.

Then Sarg is captured and sold as a slave to Gorgik.  After the sale, Sarg says to his new master "You should have take [sic] the woman.  You get her work in the day, her body at night." To which Gorgik replies "You think I'll get any less from you?"

Yep.

Apparently the reason Gorgik bought a slave is because he physically cannot have sex unless one partner is wearing a slave collar.  This toes the line between implying that gay sex is really messed up, and bringing up issues of the psychology of power relations. 

That's all I have to say on that, except that people who claim that speculative fiction is more homophobic than other genres obviously are not reading the right books.  This was not a bromance, or homoerotic undertones.  There was very unambiguously sex.

IV.  The Tale of Dragons and Potters

I have to bring up an interesting coincidence on this for people who have read The Wheel of Time.  There is a character named Bayle who has "an inch of yellow beard, mostly beneath his chin - no real mustache."  Granted, he's eighteen.  No he does not have a funny accent.  Still.

There is also a character named Raven who is...you know your friend whose a rabid man-hating feminist?  That's her.  She's from an oppressive matriarchy, and at one point tells her people's creation story, which parallels Christianity in odd ways, except that Adam and Eve are both women, and Adam's punishment for original sin is to be turned into " 'man, which means broken woman." 

Interestingly, not only are the male characters uncomfortable with this story, but the female as well.  A sign of feminism gone too far?  Or internalized oppression?  Though this is the girl (now grown-up) who listened to Old Venn's stories.

This is also the story where it is revealed that there is no birth-control herb (Tamora Pierce won't be part of the scene for a while).

V.  The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers

Most of these issues are brought up in Sarg, but there's not too much to say about this one, so I'm going to talk about the dragons.  Dragons in Neveryon are vicious, impractical creatures, tamed only because some lord way back when decided they were pretty.  Their riders (yes, they have riders, this is post-McCaffery) are girls - young girls - because they are smaller and therefor lighter.  It is also a very high-risk and undesireable job, so the riders are also the delinquent "bad girls" who don't have a choice.

The last tale has Gorgik and Sarg on a violent campaign to end slavery.  There is an interesting debate between Sarg and a slave, who explains that their methods are actually counterproductive.  Sarg kills him.  The slave had a point.  But Sarg's rage, his desire to make a change now - that also is understandable.

Also, upon their meeting with Norema and Raven, Gorgik introduces himself and Sarg as lovers.  No one really bats an eye at the gender relations.

Appendix:  Some Informal Remarks Toward the Modular Calculus, Part Three

The title of this scared me too.  In fact, it details the discovery of an ancient text telling the oldest story known to mankind, and the difficulties in translating this.  I'm pretty sure it's all made up, but it's very plausible sounding.  But when you google "Culhar text," the only links that show up are related to Delany.

Essentially, the point of the appendix is that Delany took inspiration from this story for Neveryon.  Or that someone did; I think it might be a story-within-a-story, and that the appendix relates to one of his other books.  It's so brilliant, though, because some of the passages from the alleged text have translations that run thus:

Either

1) "the love of the small barbarian slave for the tall man from Culhare."

Or

2)  "the love of the tall slave from Culhare for the small barbarian."

Or even

3)  "the small love of the barbarian and the tall man for slavery."

Or...all three at once.

So by this point I am quite determined to become a Delany fangirl, because that man is brilliant.  He asks so many questions, and doesn't answer a single one, instead forcing you to think about it.  In a 1970's sword-and-sorcery novel.  This is pre-Brooks/Eddings fantasy at its finest, before the Star-Wars-with-dragons plot became standard and everyone had to invent their own world, and the world you invented explored possibilities and questions that could not be explored in our own world.

Feminist Fantasy: Alanna vs. Indigo

The other day I was in a used bookstore and I ran into Nocturne: Book Four of Indigo, by Louise Cooper (1990).  Now, I've been spending the past several years off and on perusing secondhand bookstores for the Indigo series - I've only been able to get book 3 at a library.  I picked the first one up on a whim at a used book store, and took about a year to get around to reading it.  It was kind of like what happened a couple weeks ago when I woke up in the middle of the night needing to read some trashy B-fantasy.  And I had Indigo on hand.  And about a chapter in, I realized my mistake.  This was not trashy at all.

The story starts with a princess who pulls a Pandora ("What's in this box that no one's ever, ever supposed to open?") and releases seven demons into the world, and condemns her boyfriend to eternal torment (or until the demons are destroyed) in the process.  She is given one chance to redeem herself - the goddess grants her immortality, so she has all the time in the world to destroy the demons. 

What I really love about the series is that it flips the traditional fairy-tale narrative on its head - the princess goes out and has adventures while the prince just sits in his tower.  It's one of the few books I know of that has a strong female protagonist who is not involved in a love triangle.  And the mutant wolf.  Gotta love the mutant wolf.

There is more than one kind of feminist literature, however.  When most people think of feminist fantasy, they think of Tamora Pierce (Actually, they probably think Katniss or Hermione, but for now we're going to pretend I'm right, 'kay?).  Pierce's characters are always defying the patriarchy and breaking gender roles and confusing misogynists and saving the world blah blah blah.

I was big into Tamora Pierce back in middle school/high school, having started with the Circle of Magic quartet in elementary school from the book orders, moving on to The Immortals because the first book had ponies on the cover (Yeah.  So?) and deciding to round out my repertoire with the author's first work, the Alanna books (Song of the Lioness, whatever).

Alanna is a princess (well, the daughter of a duke or a lord or something) who decides to switch places with her twin brother, disguising herself as a boy to go to knight school while he goes to magic school and becomes evil and gay. 

Contrasting approaches to feminism in the abovementioned works:

1.  The Strong Female Protagonist
Crossdressing.  Girl dressing as boy still gives power to masculinity.  Granted, she "comes out" as a woman in later books, and Pierce has a later series of an openly female knight, but crossdressing princesses still sends the message of "How does a woman get power in society?  Become a man!" 

Second point on the crossdressing note...it's just too damn convenient that she has a twin brother that she can switch places with.  Too-convenient things in novels just bug me.  And attributing it to divine intervention is cheating.

Indigo is a woman and it's not a big deal.  It's fantasy, after all, so the pseudo-medieval world does not have to be a rabid patriarchy if you don't want it to be.  Her gender is very rarely brought up.  She becomes a strong female character by being strong and female, rather than strong despite being female.  And yes, this route completely ignore relevant questions of gender roles, but it is still refreshing to have a woman character who is not defined by her woman-ness.

2.  Relationship with men
Tamora Pierce may have invented magical birth control.  The purpose of this was so that her characters could experience the sexual liberation that America was having by the 80's.  The books make a big fuss over Alanna's sex life and the double standard regarding women and sexuality.  And there's the love triangle with the prince and the rogue and blah blah blah.

Indigo has a boyfriend in hell. And she's a bit gloomy over missing him, and the fact that he's suffering - who wouldn't be? - but she spends remarkably little time brooding on it.  And she doesn't get tempted into a love triangle with another man (and the fact that she's immortal would make temptation awkward, I imagine).  There's a guy in book 3 who has a thing for her, but she's like "Uhh...no.  It's complicated."  Her love life is so much less important than slaying the demons.

3.  Relationship with gods.
Okay, done with the hard-core feministy stuff.  Moving on to the fantasy stuff. 

Pierce's pantheon are all just so meddlesome.  With Indigo, the god's function is to say "You fucked up.  Go be immortal and fix it."  And that's it.  She's done her part, and stays out of it.  With Alanna, the gods are constantly "Oh hey, go do this."  "Why?"  "I'm a god, don't argue.  Here's a thing to help you." "What's this do?"  "This gets you out of a situation later that the writer can't think of a proper resolution for."

4.  Animal companions
Alanna has a stupid cat that does what now?   It's basically just a mouthpiece for the gods; it's like that owl in the Legend of Zelda games, that shows up and tells you "Don't go to Kakariko village yet.  You have to go to the castle first," even if you know perfectly well you can't move on in the game until you go the castle and get the ocarina, but maybe you just feel like completing the cucco quest to get a bottle first and you don't need a stupid owl telling you not to.  Indigo has a freaking mutant telepathic wolf who has her own tragic backstory, and even though she falls a little flat as a character because she's just the supportive sidekick, she still has more motivation and personality than the stupid kitten who bullies the protagonist with plot advice.

So which do you prefer?  Female protagonists that actively subvert the patriarchy?  Or strong protagonists that just happen to be female?

I apologize if any of the information I gave on any of the books here is inaccurate.  I haven't read Alanna or the early Indigo books in a few years.

I will say I honestly like the later Pierce books a lot more than the early ones.  Maybe I'll do a post on that so you don't think I hate her.  I really don't.

Compulsory Heterosexulity in Fiddler on the Roof

It shows how much queer theory has been stuffed into my brain when I can’t even watch a musical without analyzing it.  That being said, the Rosetown cast did a fantastic job, as always.

The first thing to do with any feminist critique is to measure female presence using the Bechdel test.  “Fiddler,” despite having many important female characters, only barely passes.  At the very end, during the exodus from Anatevka, the Matchmaker stops by Tevye’s house to tell Golde that she is moving to Jerusalem.  Other than that, every single conversation is either with a man or about a man.  Heck, there’s even a musical number about men.

Now let’s go through the daughters, because I’m not quite hard-core enough to go through the entire cast.

At first glance, the play seems pretty feminist-friendly.  After all, the women are defying their father’s wishes in order to do what they want with their lives…regarding the man they marry.  In other words, the women defy a male object by seeking another.

Tzeitel

Tzeitel’s act of defiance is to choose her own lover, the poor tailor, rather than marry the rich butcher her father picked out for her.  How does she go about this?  First she pressures Motel into telling her father.  She can’t do it herself, obviously.  Then, when her father announces her engagement to the butcher, she begs him not to force her, and he, being the benevolent patriarch, gives in.  One has to wonder, though, what would have happened if he had not been so benevolent.  Obviously, it is Tevye’s story of transformation, but if you change the perspective, it becomes a lot darker.
Tzeitel finally convinces her father to let her marry Motel, when Motel finally stands up to Tevye.  His winning line is “Even a poor tailor deserves some happiness,” a line that was fed to him by Tzeitel.  Does she get any credit for it?  Of course not.  A woman’s job is to stand behind her man, to support him in everything he does and do nothing for herself.  But Motel’s so adorkable, we can forgive him.

Hodel

Hodel has a love at first fight kind of relationship with Perchik.  She is certainly witty and clever enough to keep up with him.  No one ever wonders if she could be a student, however.  She can only marry one.  She follows Perchik to Siberia to help him in his work with the Communist party, and this perhaps is a matter that is progressive for the times; she can only leave her hometown with/for a man, but she is leaving town, and of her own free will. 

Perchik proposes in the most awkward manner possible, posing an abstract question about the economics of marriage, listing the benefits and bases thereof, to which Hodel keeps adding “And affection.”  Because women are emotional and men are logical. 

When it comes time to break the news to Tevye, who is initially against it, Hodel’s argument is “Papa, please!”  Perchik’s argument is “We’re not asking for your permission.  But we would like your blessing.”  Hodel just goes with it.  If her husband-to-be wants to ditch tradition completely, then so does she.

Chavaleh

Chavaleh commits the greatest transgression of all, running off with a gentile bookworm.  I do like their courtship the best:  “You like books.  I like books.  Here’s a book.  You should read it, and then we can talk about it.”  I feel like that’s going to be me someday.  Anyway.

Chavaleh leaves behind her family, her culture, everything she has ever known, for a man.  Granted, she’s supposed to be like, fifteen. So I’m sure it all makes perfect sense in her mind.  Also, for having maybe five minutes of dialogue, Fyedka has more personality than Edward Cullen.

I should clarify that “compulsory heterosexuality” in Adrienne Rich’s sense is not just a lack of gay characters.  Compulsory heterosexuality is the fairy tale ending, where the men and women are all paired off neatly and no one is supposed to want anything different.  There are no widows, or spinsters, or lesbians.  A woman’s primary relationship is with a man and not a woman  - not her best girl friend or group of friends, not her sister or her mother or what have you.

In “Fiddler,” the one character who escapes compulsory heterosexuality is the matchmaker, ironically, whose function in society is to uphold compulsory heterosexuality.  But I was going to focus on the daughters.

Tevye has five daughters (seven in Rosetown).  Two have fates that are left unknown.  All that we do know is that they move to America, and if Tevye thought he had a hard time holding onto tradition in Anatevka… 

Now, following the logical progression of his daughters’ lives, I have predictions for the last two.  One will remain single.  She’ll go to college and become a lawyer or a business professional.  Or she'll be a crazy artist hippie bum (or whatever the 1905 equivalent is); she’ll do something fulfilling with her life.  And she might go on dates, or have sexual encounters with men, but she won’t settle down and marry one.

The other daughter is going to be a lesbian.

[I checked all the spellings of names on Wikipedia; if I got any wrong I apologize.]

An (Incomplete) Account of the History of LGBT Characters in Fantasy Fiction

So I've pretty much decided to do a Vito Russo on this whole thing.  I've been trawling book lists on the intenet, and I have over 100 starting in 1962 (well, it's a dystopia).  That's only for gay major characters, though.  Many other books have a small queer presence that you don't notice unless you're twleve years old and desperately searching for some confirmation of your identity.  Most of the following I read before I was out, and I (somewhat subconsciously) kept a mental checklist of every gay character and incident that I read about.

A Brief Timeline of Queer Content in Fantasy Literature

The 70's
1977 - The Farthest Shore, by Ursula K. LeGuin
From everything I know about LeGuin, there's a lot of queer stuff in her books.  I've only read The Left Hand of Darkness (gender-bending aliens) and the Earthsea trilogy (wizards 'n' shit).  The third book in the Earthsea trilogy, The Farthest Shore, has a very strange relationship between Arren, the teenage prince, and Ged, the Archmage who is...I'm not sure how old.  Fiftyish?  The text says quite clearly that Arren is "in love" with Ged.  This is the 70's, so I'm assuming it passed under the radar because people didn't take it literally and nothing sexual happens or is implied.  But it seems to be somewhat reciprocated, as when Arren is captured by slavers, Ged whips out the big magics in a "You don't fuck with my prince" gesture.

The 80's
1983 was a big year.  Diane Duane published So You Want To Be A Wizard, though I never realized the Advisory wizards were a gay couple until I read about it on Tropes.  It was a big "Oh! So that's  why they live together!" revelatory moment.  We also have McCaffery's Pern novel, Moreta, where the implications that riders of green dragons are gay are more or less confirmed.  And finally, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, a feminist retelling of the King Arthur legends (it wasn't that bad, if I recall), has a scene where Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinivere have a threesome, and Lancelot gets a bit preoccupied with Arthur.  Kind of a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, as it doesn't really add anything to the plot, or develop into a subplot.  And, while I'm at it, I may as well throw in Alanna, by Tamora Pierce.  I need to reread those, but apparently the main character's brother has a thing with the villain (and subsequently turns evil), which got toned down when the publisher decided to market the book For The Children.

1987 - Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey
"Look!  Lesbians!" is about all that happens, with regards to the queer content.  Oh, there's some subplot in the end where the one lover dies, and they hook up the survivor with the random girl who had an unrequited crush on her.  Like, right after the first lover dies, and the survivor is in telepathic shock.  There is also a moment when the lesbian character is talking to the main character, and is like "You're chill that we're lesbians, right?"  and the main character's reaction is "Oh yeah, I'm from a patriarchal polygamist society.  We had lots of lesbianism going on behind the men's backs."  So...progressive?  They are out of the closet, at least.

The 90's
1990 - The Eye of the World (Book 1 of The Wheel of Time), by Robert Jordan
These you have to do a close reading for, and I don't think I have time.  A few times, he mentions some of the (all-female) magic users are "pillow friends."  Apparently, that means lesbians.  I don't even remember which ones were, though; no one important.  They're just kind of there.

1993 - Hexwood, by Diana Wynne Jones
Very, very minor, but it's Jones and I love her and I just have to mention it.  There are two "gay boys who run the wine shop" in the town.  And they have an annoying dog.  That's all that's said about them.  They're never given names.  But hey, now we're using the word gay.  And they're not evil or tragic or closeted.  Or important...

1996 - Stone of Tears (Book 2 of The Sword of Truth), by Terry Goodkind
"Look!  Lesbians!" even more than Lackey.  One spends a chapter giving the main character her life story, including a page dedicated to her relationship with another female character (whose backstory is not given, and she subsequently dies tragically in her lover's arms during the Plague Episode). Considering that in Book 1, the one homosexual character was a muderous pedophile, I think this is progress.

1997 - Harry Potter and the Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone, by J.K. Rowling
Yeah, remember?  Dumbledore is gay.  So, so closeted, though.  You can tell there's subtext in book 7, with Grindelwald.  I thought I was just slashing, but Word of Gay confirmed in '07.  We may have just taken a step back; however, this is a children's book series, and hugely popular, so any presence at all is not to be scorned.
1997 - Sandry's Book (Book 1 of the Circle of Magic), by Tamora Pierce
More closeted children's book characters!  Same with So You Want To Be A Wizard.  I forget if I read about it on Tropes or found out through The Will of the Empress.  I think it was Tropes.  Rereading those books now, there's sort of contradictory subtext.  In Book 1, Lark calls Rosethorn "Rosie" and in Book 2, it's explicity stated that they sleep in separate rooms.  If I had been ten and allowed the possibility that I could grow up and marry a woman, high school would have been a lot less stressful.  And if I had figured this out when I was writing my paper on LGBT content in children's literature my freshman year of college, I could probably have added another page.

The 21st Century
2000 - Storm Front (Book 1 of the Dresden Files), by Jim Butcher
There's a random bisexual hooker in Book 1, and random references to the fact that homosexuality exists throughout the series, though no important characters are actually gay.  Except maybe the vampires.  Still, I appreciate a straight writer acknowledging that homosexuality exists in his universe (our universe), instead of either having a straight universe or a token queer.

2002 - Abarat, by Clive Barker
Clive Barker is the queer Stephen King.  I don't mean gay (though he is), I mean queer.  Stephen King writes staight horror; vampires in Maine, psychic powers at the prom, etc.  Barker writes queer horror, which basically means he's about ten times weirder than King.  A vampire that feeds on time instead of blood, or, as in Abarat, a high-schooler who is whisked away to a bizarre archipelago.  One of the side characters has a male partner and a bunch of dogs.  Probably supposed to be an author avatar, except Barker and his partner broke up while he was writing the third book.  Incidentally, he also had health problems that resulted in a brief coma.  No wonder it took him 9 years to finish book 3.

2003 - Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5), by Stephen King
And speaking of Stephen King...Father Callahan (of Salem's Lot) is gay!  Ish.  He had an awkward man-crush in his backstory/interimstory.  Interpret that how you will.

2006 - The Book of Lost Things, by John Connelly
I just had to include this right after Dark Tower.  It's a sort of grown-up fractured fairy tale, where a kid (it's not a kid's book) gets whisked into a world of fairy tales and classic literature.  One of the people his meets is Childe Roland of the poem (was it Browning?).  The same Roland that King's Dark Tower series is based on.  And this Roland is gay; he had a thing with a fellow knight who died and so now he's on a quest for...redemption or something.  But gay Roland just makes me lol.

2009 - Best Served Cold, by Joe Abercrombie
I suspect there might be more in his trilogy, but in this stand-alone novel, one of the...villains, I guess...is gay.  Which seems likes a step back, but every character in the book is morally suspect - the protagonist is a mercenary on a vengeance quest.  The villains are all quite well fleshed-out, and no correlation is drawn between the one character's sexuality and his villainness.  In fact, I believe he is a general, so he's a big important gay, which is positive in a way.

2010 - The Last Hunt, by Bruce Coville
Yeah, this one is kind of cheating because no one is actually gay.  There is a beautiful bromance, which I don't count as queer, but since it borders on ho yay, one of the characters actually asks if they are a couple (in a non-homophobic, just curious way).  He gives a "No - not that there's anything wrong with that" answer.  Coville directly addresses the homoeroticism of a bromance...in a children's book!  So which is better?  Having gay characters without saying that they're gay, or having characters who aren't gay explicitly support homosexuality?

Conclusion:  Over the past forty or so years, representations of gay characters in fantasy have become more open.  Even if they are not outed in-universe (and that's mostly just in children's books), the authors have no problem saying their intent.  I would hesitate to claim that representations have become more postitive.  I would say, just from this sample, that they have grown less positive but more realistic.  Not all gay people are morally sound staunch sidekicks, after all. 

It occurred to me the other day that people complain the gay characters always die, but - in fantasy, at least - that might have a closer correlation with the fact that gay characters are always minor supporting characters, who have a higher mortality rate than the main cast or heroes.  The solution, then, would not be to help gay characters live longer, happier lives, but to give them more important roles so that they can have longer, happier lives.  Or have more than just the one token gay.  But, long hours of research and many, many books stand between me and any solid conclusions.

Top 13 (14) Queer Fantasy Novels

As I was going back over my list, and recounting, I realized something.  I was perplexed as to why, even at midnight hopped up on insomnia, I had decided to wedge "The Sword of Truth" onto that list as an afterthought.  I mean, it has the random lesbians, but they're not really important.  Then I realized I had actually written "The Skull of Truth," which is a chapter book by Bruce Coville about a kid who finds a magic skull that forces people to tell the truth.  Leaving it too close to the family dinner table brings a number of shocking family secrets to life, including that his grandmother used to be a stripper and that his uncle is gay.  And as soon as his uncle outs, he realizes he has to get that skull the hell away from there, and so flees the dinner table, making his uncle think that he's really that freaked out, but it's all okay in the end.  And this was written in 1999.  For a gay character - in a kids book no less! - to be out and not have AIDS and be a nice guy who is happily settled with his patner, I give it an A.  It's hard to find books with that good of gay characters nowadays!

Now to continue my original list.

7.  The Magicians and Mrs. Quent (2008) - Galen Beckett
Character:  Eldyn the gay mage tertiary viewpoint character, who isn't really connected to main plot.
Queer Context:  The whole idea of having "male magic" and "female magic" isn't anything new, but Beckett is (as far as I know) the first to also have "gay male magic."  Lesbians, I assume, just count as women.  It is unclear whether all gay men are sons of witches and have illusion magic, or all illusionists are gay men.  In any case, the theaters are run by gay male illusionists. 
LGBTQ-friendliness rating:  B-.  Yes, Eldyn's a positive character, but he doesn't really do anything; he's just kind of there because the author wanted a gay character.  Also, there are the unfortunate implications of all gay men work in the theater.  Plus, Eldyn is just kind of stupid, which is endearing in a Woobie Destroyer of Worlds hero, but makes him an annoying dope as an ordinary (ish) person.

6.  The Steel Remains (2008) - Richard K. Morgan
Characters:  Ringil the ex-hero anti-hero, and Lady Archeth, the half-human magical person tertiary viewpoint character.
Queer Context:  In at least one country (Ringil's) you get killed for being gay, unless, like Ringil, you're too important for them to dare.  Archeth's lesbianism isn't addressed in the context of society, but some king tries to bribe her with a slave girl.  Also, she's half human, so I don't count her as a discount nonhuman lesbian.  The creepy fairy beings, one of which Ringil has a fling with, don't count as gay; I think they are universally pansexual.
LGBTQ-friendliness rating:  C+.  Ringil is supposed to be a dark deconstruction of fantasy tropes, and the author (who is straight) made him gay to add something off about him.  However, he does give a solid queer context for society, and includes a lesbian as well, and I don't know why he decided to make her gay.

5.  Fire Logic (2002) - Laurie J. Marks
Characters:  Everyone, except the token straight couple. 
Queer Context:  Universal pansexuality.  Despite this, most of the main characters end up in same-sex relationships.  To the point where one wonders how the human race manages to reproduce in this world.  Also implied polyamory in some cases, which is just fine in-universe.
LGBTQ-friendliness rating:  B.  The "everyone is gay" aspect gets a little overwhelming, but this book is notable in that same-sex couples will refer to their partner as their "husband" or "wife" (presumeably opposite-sex couples or groups do this as well).  There isn't any sort of ceremony that goes along with it, but the fact that Marks actually uses the words is remarkable.  Even Lackey and Pierce, who try to deal with issues of gay acceptance vs. homophobia, never get into the legal aspects of same-sex relationships. 

4.  Swordspoint (1987) - Ellen Kushner
Characters:  Everyone but the villain is bi.  The main protagonist, Richard, has a male lover, and the secondary viewpoint character, Michael Godwin, sleeps around with everybody.
Queer Context:  No sexual categories.  The villain mentions at one point that he personally isn't in to having sex with men, but it's not a homophobic thing, it's just a personal preference. 
LGBTQ-friendliness rating:  B-.  Taking advantage of the genre to create a world without sexual categories is nice, but not really helpful.  Also, even the "good" guys aren't nice people.  But gay characters not being defined by their sexual orientation is nice, even if Kushner takes that idea to extremes.

3.  Melusine (2005) - Sarah Monette
Character:  Felix, the crazy asshole wizard.
Queer Context:  So it's okay if Monette doesn't say "gay" but not for Lackey?  Well, yeah.  "Molly" is an actual 18th-Century word for gay people, not a Scrabble-bag cop-out.  Also, "Janus" is the two-faced Roman god, or in the Melusine world, a bisexual.  Very few fantasy authors address bisexuality as distinct from homosexuality, if they address it at all (outside of universal pansexuality).  Different countries have different views on homosexuality.  In Marathat it is frowned upon, but tolerated.  In Troia everyone's chill with it - they're ginger fantasyland Greeks.  In Kekropia they kill, torture, or imprison you - they're the hates-everything people.  In Caloxa it's taboo, but not a death sentence.
LGBTQ-friendliness rating:  B+.  Felix is a wonderful jerkass.  There are enough gay molly characters throughout that it doesn't come across as "all gays are jerkasses," but he is the main protagonist.  To be fair, both the protagonists are very well-rounded (not all gays are nice people, after all; sucks to the helpful minority) and it is clear that Felix's abusive tendencies have nothing to do with his sexual orientation.

2.  Eon (2008) - Alison Goodman
Character:  Lady Dela, a male-to-female transgender who acts as a mentor to the crossdresser protagonist.
Queer Context:  Lately it's started to bother me that all the plucky crossdressing princesses are heterosexual.  Historically speaking, if you were a lesbian, you were statistically more likely to be a crossdresser.  Also, the issue of actually being transgender is never mentioned.  The inclusion of a transgender character - male to female, no less! - fleshes out the issues of gender, gender identity, and gender roles in society that the book raises.  Not to mention that Dela's role as a transwoman in her society is seen as something special and awesome by her people, and even though she is currently abroad, she's too important for anyone to give her crap about it.
LGBTQ-friendliness rating:  A.  There are so many books about princesses in pants, but no one thinks to put a penis in a dress.  She is just an awesome strong female character.

1.  Beyond the Pale (1999) - Mark Anthony
Character:  Lots.  Namely, the male lead and hero, Travis, is implied to be bisexual, but rather than hooking up with the female protagonist as every other novel would have him do, he ends up with the knightly sidekick.
Queer Context:  Half(ish) the story is set in our world, the rest is in a typical medieval fantasyland, where homosexuality is frowned upon unless you belong to a certain order of knights where it's almost required.  The gay subtext is very low-key in the first book, but this is the late nineties, so I think Anthony was waiting until he had a contract and no one could do anything about it.  Besides the gay knights, there are also a gay cowboy couple, a gay Brit in the Wild West (during the time-travel episode), a transwoman seeress, an implied bisexual who has a thing with a fairy (part-human; and there are other hints) but ends up with a man, and numerous minor references scattered throughout.
LGBTQ-friendliness rating:  A.  Yes, I'm biased because this is my favorite book series ever.  But Travis is the archetypal dopey hero, and he ends up with a guy, plus a lot of other queerness happening throughout, mostly among the "good guys".  I should have made a separate category for queer presence.  Hm.

Coming up next (I'm not done with gay fantasy yet!):  Incidental homosexuality in fantasy literature.  Those minor characters are not to be discounted!

(Bottom) Top 13 Queer Fantasy Novels - Part 1

I can't believe I haven't done one of these before.    Then I started putting together a top ten, and realized that I only had 13 to choose from.  So I decided to just include them all

This list consists only of books I have read.  I have not read Fleweling's Lark on the Wing or Hambly's Darkmage, or Duane's Door Into Fire, so I can't judge where to put them on the list.  At some point, if I want to be the fantasy lit Vito Russo, I might track down the rest of the books, but for now, this is what is in my repertoire.

Criteria for "Queer Fantasy":  Must have a queer protagonist or major character.  Queer character must be out in-universe - no Dumbledore.  Also, must be human.  Vampire lesbians are cheating.

13.  City of Bones (2007) - Cassandra Clare
Character:  Alec, the gay sidekick.
Queer Context:  Real world-ish.  There’s an underground clique of demon-hunters, and it’s implied that they would be very not happy if they knew Alec was gay.  He’s kind of a straight gay, and hooks up with the one other gay character in the story, who is a flaming glittery gay mage, after minimal off-page courtship.  They have nothing in common except being the only two gay characters in the story.  Also, the story begins with him having a crush on his stepbrother, the male lead Jace, who gives Alec a pep talk and tells Alec that he isn’t really in love with him, he just likes to torture himself by falling in love with unattainable people.  And the main cast seems to be chill that Alec is gay, but no one overtly supports him, they just see it as a nonissue.  I’d be upset with the way the gay romance subplot was handled, except that the main romance subplot was just as bad; there’s an incest scare, but it turns out it was all a misunderstanding.  That’s the best obstacle you could give their relationship?  That’s totally relatable.
LGBTQ-friendly rating:  B-.  Clare at least tries, and Alec is a positive character, if not actually an accurate representation of anything.

12.  Ash (2009) - Malinda Lo
Character:  Ash, a lesbian Cinderella.
Queer Context:  Queer retelling of Cinderella.  Only I feel cheated because I was expecting her to hook up with a princess, and instead she hooks up with the Huntress, which is a completely created role and not really kosher.  And then she breaks a curse by sleeping with a (male?) fairy thing, which is really not feminist.  I mean, gaining independence from the male presence by submitting to it?  Solving problems with prostitution. 
I don’t remember how people react to their relationship; I think it’s one of those worlds where homosexuality in society is not talked about, and so I have no idea if Ash had any context for understanding her desires. 
LGBTQ-friendly rating:  C+.  There's no context for the lesbian relationship, which makes it hard to relate to.  Also, the end with the fairy.

11.  Wolfcry (2006) - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Character:  Oliza, the shapeshifter princess.  Has some really scary genetics, but conveniently ends up in a non-procreative relationship with a woman.  Each book in the series has a different viewpoint character, and this one is hers.
Queer Context:  Not given in the previous three books or even foreshadowed in this one.  Just all of a sudden the princess is gay, and mostly everyone’s fine with it.  Do they allow gay marriage?  What are the social stigmas?  No other characters are gay, and no word for gay is given.  I assume the author knows more than was revealed in the books; she has a wife, and I usually like to know the queer context of anything I write.  Granted, I usually end up with queer characters.
LGBTQ-friendly rating:  B.  Oliza isn't tokenized at all, and it's obvious she was a character first and became queer in the writing.  It's just a little sudden and lacking in context.

10.  Tithe (2002) - Holly Black
Character:  Corny, the gay sidekick.  In later books, his boyfriend Luis, and lesbian sidekick Ruth.
Queer Context:  Real world.  With fairies.  Black is one of those authors who makes sure some of her characters are gay, because some people are gay.  Always the unwaveringly supportive sidekicks, though.  Yay for helpful minorities.
LGBTQ-friendly rating:  B.  Corny was based on Black's gay friends, who are geek-gays and not flaming queens, and he's a fairly well-fleshed out character.

9.  Magic’s Pawn (1989) - Mercedes Lackey
Character:  Vanyel, the only gay Herald who actually does anything interesting.
Queer Context:  Lackey always tries to include a random queer in every book.  Someone once called her out on having way more gay men than lesbians.  She counted them up and said they were actually about even.  However, only two of her queer characters achieve major character status, and both are gay men.  Homosexuality is severely stigmatized by wider society, but any named character who is “good” is fine with it.  Nor are the parameters for the stigma clearly defined; vaguely religious, but considering it’s a massive fantasyland pantheon, you’d think there would be some variation.  Also, this is one of Lackey’s few stories where the protagonist dies at the end, and it’s the gay one.  However, I find her tragedies are at least slightly better than her happy endings.  Oh, and there are the random forest people who seem to be universally pansexual, and a gay couple of the forest people serve a sort of mentor function for Vanyel.  And the other gay major character, Firesong (in later books) is also of the forest people.  The people in “bad” countries are more homophobic than in the “good” countries.
LGBTQ-friendly rating:  C.  Because it's 80's, and preachy.  In the context of the 80's, I would give it an A for effort, though.  And the other major gay is a flaming queen.

8.  The Will of the Empress (2005) - Tamora Pierce
Character:  Daja, the lady blacksmith mage, has a sexual revelation when she is kissed by a woman.
Queer Context:  The first series was originally published in the 90’s.  The characters were ten, but they were being raised by a lesbian couple, who I did not realize was a lesbian couple until I read this book and they directly referenced it.  I wish they had been more out in the earlier books, that I read when I was ten; it would have made my life a lot simpler.  One thing I do like about it is that it includes a queer protagonist by retcon in a children’s book; me reading those books as a child and then reading the later one after coming out was a rather validating experience.  Even though the queer character is like “I had no idea I was gay” and you’d think being raised by a lesbian couple she’d have enough context to figure herself out.  Really, it’s the author deciding to make her gay a decade later when society has progressed enough and it’s in a YA novel.  Because Pierce is another who makes sure to include gay minor characters all the time.
LGBTQ-friendly rating:  B+.  Lark and Rosethorn spent the 90's in the closet, and I resent them for that.  Also, because since the author obviously decided "They've hit puberty!  Let's make one gay!" she decided the butch blacksmith should be a dyke, and not the feisty seamstress or the grouchy bookworm.  I will say, though, I really appreciate the character existing in a non-queer context first; so many gay characters (in fantasy and out) are introduced at puberty when they are struggling with sqhishy hormonal feelings.  Yes, we were once kids too.

Coming soon:  1-7.  What are my favorite gay fantasy novels?

B-Novels of the Eighties

So for some reason last night I was really craving some shoddy B-Fantasy, to the point where I would have been willing to do embarrassing things to get my hands on a Mercedes Lackey...

What's that?  B-Fantasy?  Oh, it's the same concept as B-movies - formulaic, low production value, flat characters - just with fantasy literature.  Basically, what normal people think of when they think of fantasy, with the teenage protagonist who has to save the world from the Dark Lord and runs all over the countryside learning magic and eating stew.  Etc.

Anyway, since all I brought with me to my apartment was some beautiful magic realism and some weird children's genre-benders, I was stuck.  See, books are like food.  Sometimes you want to go out to a fancy restaurant for steak and shrimp alfredo, or whatever you order (that actually sounds really good right now...) and sometimes you just want to heat up some Kraft mac and cheese in the microwave, because that's what you grew up on, and even if as an adult it disgusts you intellectually, and you can't bear to read the list of ingredients, it just tastes so bad, but so good.

But since I didn't have any to read, I started listing and categorizing and researching to try and pin down what makes B-Fantasy B-Fantasy.  Because apparently when I want mindless entertainment, I have to analyze it.

I started doing a little research, and here are my findings thus far.  Mostly is it some half-assed hypotheses and some Wikipedia trawling, but I intend to reasearch the matter further, I really do.

B-Fantasy was inspired by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (1954), and augmented by LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy (1968).  From LOTR we get the epic quest, magical macguffin, underdog hero, and Dark Lord.  After Earthsea, the protagonist is allowed to use magic, and magic becomes institutionalized.  However, many other aspects of Eathsea, such as the protagonist aging, did not catch on.  The first Dungeons and Dragons manual was published in 1974, which codified the Fantasyland setting and rules for the narrative.  This I need to look into further, but currently I blame D&D for making every fantasyland need 3races+2 - elf/dwarf/human, and two of the author's own creation; usually one of the extras is evil, and the other is unimportant to the plot.  No one besides Tolkien wrote about the elves until D&D! (needs fact-checking)

1977 saw The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks, and also the Star Wars movie.  I try not to mix fantasy and scifi, but Star Wars has the traditional epic narrative wth the whiny hero that all B-Fantasy uses, and is a potential forerunner.  Shannara had 3races+2, and all the trappings of LOTR, except instead of quiet little middle-aged hobbit protagonist, it had a dopey teenage male protagonist, likely in reflection of the anticipated audience.  It is also serialized; while Tolkien stopped with a trilogy, a prequel, and a manual, if Brooks isn't dead then he's still writing to this day.

Now we come to the 80's, which is the birth of B-Fantasy proper.  David Eddings, I kid you not, saw the emerging market and decided to jump on it for the money - literally, created a formula and cranked out books for profit.  He ditched the races (though they still remained prevalent elsewhere), instead creating a multiracial and paradoxically racially uniform world of humans (everyone of every race is the same as each other member of the race), and added meddlesome deities.  Also, the hero is allowed, in fact required, to use magic.  There is also the annoying crossdressing spunky princess love-interest.  Like Leia but less badass.  Oh, and she hooks up with the teenage protagonist.

1983 - Tamora Pierce sees the spunky crossdressing redhead princess and decides that she needs her own story, thus bringing about the start of feminist fantasy that tries too hard. Also the practice of making fantasyland be America with a medieval veneer, though Eddings hinted at that with Sendaria and I can't believe I remember the name of that country.  Hero's homeland, go figure.  Also has institutionalized magic (school of magecraft and blah blah), rather than random wizards who just float around organically to make plot things happen.  Wizards become working-class.

1984, ten years after the first Dungeons and Dragons manual was published, the Dragonlance  series is born.  It was based off of a D&D campaign.  No, honestly, it was.  We have races, we have quests, we have institutionalized magic and meddlesome deities.  For the most part, they do ditch the dopey farmboy, replacing him with the naive warrior, who is supposed to be all troubled and dark, but is really just naive and angsty.  Also, the focus is more on the quest group than any one hero.  It still has very black-and-white morality.

In 1987 Mercedes Lackey published her first book.  So here we have feminist fantasy, and clique fantasy.  I have to backtrack a little for that.  In 1967, Anne McCaffery started the Dragonriders of Pern  series.  So we have a special clique of people with special powers whose job is basically to be heroes.  This solves the problem of how to keep having the same person solve all the problems; it's their job, because they are telepathically linked to a magical critter.  Because that totally makes sense.

Now we come to the 90's, which may be the Golden Age of B-Fantasy.  Most of these series started in the 80's, but gained momentum throughout the decade and eventually came to dominate the 90's.  There was still some very original stuff in the 80's - Kushner's Swordspoint, Diana Wynne Jones's everything, Suzette Hardin Elgin's Ozark Trilogy about a planet that was colonized by the South and people who ride flying Mules (it's good stuff).  In 1990, however, Robert Jordan published the first book in The Wheel of Time.

What did WoT do that other books didn't?  It's basically the same setup as Eddings' Belgariad.  Teenage farmboy whisked away from his home by a wizard, told it is his destiny by birth to save the world from the newly reawakened Dark Lord, oh yeah and he has magic powers.  All I can say is that Jordan made it bigger (800 pages per volume, minimum), he made it better (the world at least makes slightly more sense and is more memorable than Eddings'), and he made it with love.  He kept writing even when he was dying, because he loved those books so damn much.  And I can tell you a hundred things that make the books awful (don't call me on that, please), but I can at least understand why they are so loved.

Lately, however, there has been a mainstream movement away from B-Fantasy.  Conflicts have become less idealistic, between the innocent and the Evil, and more political, between the jaded older warriors and the forces of society - kind of like the teenage hero grew up.  I won't be able to say much about George R. R. Martin, because I haven't been able to get through more than three chapters, but I think he is the key to this movement.  The current generation of writers grew up on B-Fantasy, and are too jaded with it in today's society. 

Other books like David Anthony Durham's Acacia (2007) have similar political orientations - I can't talk much about this one either because I ran into the same problem as Martin, though in Durham's case the last straw was not "I don't know which of these characters I'm supposed to care about" (though there was an element of that) and more "That is the stupidest fencing lesson I have ever read."  Then there are more direct criticisms such as E.E. Knight's Age of Fire series (2002), which is basically what Wicked did to Oz, only to Dragonlance.  Sure, there are still throwbacks like Eragon (2002), but the mainstream voice of fantasy is shifting from a teenage coming-of-age quest to multiperspective stories of human conflict.  Though in fact this sort of storytelling started in the 80's as well, with the Mannerpunk movement started by Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint.  It did not gain momentum until just recenty, though.

And of course there are all the little splinter genres like Feminist Fantasy, which I touched on a little, and Queer Fantasy (people say that fantasy is really homophobic, but I think that the fantasyland setting actually makes it easier to include gay characters without stigma; again I point to Swordspoint), and I've already ranted about Dragonrider Fantasy, which is actually a subcategory of Animal Companion Fantasy or perhaps as a genre rather than a device, it would fit better under Heroic Clique Fantasy - you have this world where there is this institution of heroes, be they dragonriders or Jedi or what have you, and every book/trilogy is about a different one whose turn it is to save the kingdom/world/continent.  Then there's the Supernatural Ensemble, which I'm not sure belongs in fantasy proper - technically its roots are in horror.

But right now, I still just want to read a magic pony story.

San Francisco - Final Days

Yeah, I've lost count of how many days I was there.  13, according to the calendar.

Movies:

"Children of Srikandi" - a bold experimental documentary about queer women (lesbian, bisexual, transgender, etc.) in Indonesia.  An interesting concept, but poorly executed.  Eight different women told eight different stories eight different ways without any sort of explanation of what was going on.  It was also scripted.  A good documentary, but no "Kuchu."

"Unforgiveable" - a French movie set in Venice about some very tangled relationships between an older man, his younger wife, her ex-girlfriend, and the ex-girlfriend's teenage son.  Quirky and fun until the dog gets killed.

"Transgender Tuesdays" - an amateur but well-made documentary about the first public clinic to offer health care and hormones for transgender people.  The most enthusiastic audience ever.  I think most of them had some connection to the clinic, as it was/is in San Francisco.  Lots of good historical background on the trans community as well.

"Wordly Women" - a shorts program featuring lesbian films from all over the world.  They were all about sex, or were weird.  Or both.  I did not feel represented.

"Let My People Go!" - Jewish comedy + French comedy + gay comedy + dysfunctional family comedy = the funniest movie I have ever seen. 

"Cloudburst" - an elderly lesbian couple breaks out of a nursing home, aiming for the Canadian border so they can finally get married.  A hysterical romp with a bittersweet ending.  See, everyone loves crazy old ladies; these ones just happen to be a couple. 

Best moment:

I really really wanted a Frameline t-shirt, partly for the memories and partly because the slogan was "Find your story," and I thought that was really appropriate.  By the time I actually got around to buying one, though, they were out of smalls and mediums.  "Are you a filmmaker?"  the woman selling them asked me.  I looked down at my camera bag, which I carried with me everywhere. 

"Kind of," I answered.  "I'm from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire..."

The woman thrust a Large t-shirt at me.  "Take it," she said.  "Don't pay for it.  We love you guys, and we really appreciate you coming all the way out here."

So what could I do but take the shirt and thank her as many times as I could?

Pride:

Because this is still a class, our professors told us to think about the concept of power while we were at Pride.  I didn't actually make it to the PrideFest, but I was in the Trans March and the Dyke March, and saw the Pride Parade.

The Trans March: 

I was shocked at how many people were there.  I mean, I care about transpeople, but I didn't realize that so many other people did.  And then when the march started, I was completely overwhelmed by the sense of solidarity and activism and pride.  It was glorious, even if I did get overstimulated from the crowd.

The Dyke March:

If the Trans March was so wonderful, then the Dyke March should be even better, because these are actually my people, right?  No.  That was the biggest disappointment the trip.  See, I love my gay male friends, and I love my pansexual female friends, but sometimes I feel like I'm the only lesbian in the world.  And then when I do encounter lesbians, in books or film or at the Dyke March, I feel no connection.  Am I still a lesbian if I don't go to bars and pick up chicks for one-night stands and dance in the street without a shirt?  I have not found a single lesbian image that I can connect with, which might be why I sometimes act bisexual; because even though that's not what I identify as, it's who I identify with.  Maybe I'm bisexual-sexual.

This is all very confusing. 

The Pride March:

In addition to Pride, there is also a group called Gay Shame, and I'm starting to agree with their stance even if I think they really need a new name.  OccuPride is another similar group that seems to be doing better, though.  Both these groups are against the corporatization of Pride. 

Pride disgusts me a little.  It's just a big gay block party.  And yes, it's great that we can celebrate out identity, and sexuality is inherently sexual, but...let's think about power for a minute.  Why do so many corporations have floats in the parade?  It's because even though we are a minority and a marginalized population, we have power.  Not only buying power ourselves, but we have enough allies that it is for the most part no longer socially acceptable to be a homophobe.  It's no coincidence Obama voices support for gay marriage just before election season.  He said he supported it the first time he got elected; is he really giving us more than empty words, and are we content to accept them because he says them in his beautiful black Morgan Freeman voice?  (I have a joke theory that Morgan Freeman was a catalyst for Obama being elected, because he taught our generation love the sound of a black man's voice).

Now let's go back to gay power.  We've come a long way since Stonewall, since reclaiming the streets, since the rage of ACT UP and the AIDS epidemic.  It's illegal to kill us and legal for us to have sex, and most of us our content with that.  We're complacent.  We have some rights, we have our annual party, and we've lost the will to fight for more.  We have forgotten that we have power, and we've forgotten how to use it.  We used to march for rights, to save our lives and our jobs and our friends, to spur the government to action against AIDS (the political history of AIDS is actually very interesting).  Now we march because we can, because we want to get drunk and take our clothes off.

See, what really disgusts me about Pride is not how wildly everyone parties; it's because this is the one time a year people can feel comfortable celebrating being gay, and most of them feel like it is enough.  It is because this day manifests 364 days of repression, and what if we could be gay every day?  I don't think Pride is enough; I think it's mainstream America trying to appease us.   I think it's time we take back our power and use it for marriage reform, immigration reform, global rights, am I forgetting anything?  Am I still coherent?  I'm not all the way finished with this think, so I might not end up where I intended.  I'm not trying to say that you should stop your annual party (though personally I'd be happy with that, but I'm not a partier and I try to respect people who are), but I don't think you should be content with that.  That party is a symbol of power, and I don't think you should let that power go during the rest of the year.

San Francisco: Days 7-8

So I left off on the Mark Freeman interview. 

Later that night, I saw "Keep the Lights On."  My first reaction was:  woobie of all woobies, Sarah Monette would go apeshit for this.  I am mostly able to use normal people words, though I still have some rather strong emotions, which I'll get into later.

"Keep the Lights On" is darkly comedic or comically dark. I thought it was going to be angsty, but I wasn't expecting to care.  But the first scene is a guy surfing through a phone sex line, and the audience just started giggling, and I was like "Oh, I'm not the only one who thinks this is funny?  All right.  I'm down with that."  Of course, then the film gets into the Danish puppy-gay's drug addict boyfriend, and their painfully co-dependent relationship, but all the characters are still so fun and quirky that you honestly feel bad for them.  At least I did.

Yesterday we interviewed Ira Sachs, the director of "Keep the Lights On."  And the actor who played the drug-addict boyfriend of the Danish puppy was there as well.  And...I kind of asked him if I could hug him.  And I may have said something about puppies.  And I feel really awkward and embarrassed about the whole thing, but my only regret is that I didn't get a photo.  It's on film, though.

And if you know me, you know that I don't like touching people and I don't like men, so I don't even know why I did that, except that I have a strange relationship with ficitonal characters.  I relate to characters better than I do to real people.  And an actor, especially a woobie (woobie = kicked puppy.  Adorable and tortured.) messes with my perception because he's a person, but he's a character, but he's a person that I can physically hug instead of just feel woobied about.  And he's a ginger.  Ginger trumps gender.

(I just realized:  Ginger + gay + drug addict + abusive co-dependent relationship + prostitution = Felix from Doctrine of Labyrinths.  It's a book series by Sarah Monette and one of my favorites of all time, and I think I know why I got all gushy now.  Ah well.)

Yesterday was a long day.  We were planning on interviewing Frameline volunteers, but we were all too drained, and I had nearly burst into tears during the morning meeting (don't worry; it's all on film), because for the first time I felt like I couldn't handle it.  So I only went to one movie, "Children of Srikandi," a documentary about queer women in Indonesia, which was brave and an interesting concept, but no "Kuchu."  Very scripted and not informative.

After that I went home and I took time to read a book and be alone, except for when one of the boys barged in my room demanding to know why I wasn't out having fun.  Because my idea of fun doesn't involve alcohol and penises?  Spending time with a book for the first time in over a week was glorious.

But if "Kuchu" made me want to become an activist, "Lights" made me want to write again.  I haven't been able to write since I got here, not just because I've been so busy but because my mind feels really unstable right now.  Not in a bad way, just that it's changing so fast and being opened to so many things, I cannot focus on the creative process long enough to create something.  I'm thinking so much, but I don't have time to process anything, and writing is just a way to process life, isn't it?

San Francisco: Days 5 - 7

I think I left off at my angstfest.  I've roller-coastered up and down a few times since then.  I'm not sure where I am right now.  I'm taking a lull just to write.

Movies I have seen:  "Frauensee," "Beauty," "Call Me Kuchu"

Frauensee:  Decent.  A lot of German humor.  Not much resolution or plot arc.  Character relationships were developed enough to keep me interested through the sex scenes (What?  Don't you get bored at movies that are just:  "Repression, repression, SEX, unhappy ending"?)

Beauty:  Brutal and dark.  I liked it, but I was in a weird mood that night.  I was feeling really happy and so wanted to see something dark.  Don't ask me how that works; I just live in my mind, I don't understand it.  Some very African cinematography, which, for those who did not have Engelking's AP English class, means that there are a lot of boring shots of nothing.  And it was kind of "Repression, SEX, unhappy ending," but all the sex was very non-gratuitous (either ugly or violent or both) and there were some interesting psychological things going on with the main character.  Like I said, I liked it, but I feel like a bad person for saying that.

"Call Me Kuchu" - seven-minute standing ovation for the documentary about Ugandan gays; allegedly a Castro record.  The main activist, David Kato, was killed while they were filming.  And those people are not hiding in closets, they are active, even though they risk their lives.  I don't like to toss around the word "inspiring," but - not just from this movie, from everything this course has brought me - I'm starting to feel that I can't just sit still, because these are our people and our rights.  It's the same hatred fueling the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda as the marriage amendment in Minnesota, and we think that we're okay because no one's killing us anymore, but 1) they are, not just globally and not just in the south, I'm talking Trevor Project here, and 2) it's not just going to get better.  Yeah, times are changing, but that's because people are fighting, and I don't think a lot of people realize just how hard some of these people fight.  I didn't.  I think I'm turning into an activist.

Interviews we have done:
Jack Dubowsky, director of "Submerged Queer Spaces," a documentary about places in San Francisco that used to be gay bars; he is also a representative for the Out Twin Cities film festival.  A very chill guy, an experienced documentarian, so he knew how to be a good interviewee.  He also flirted shamelessly with our sound guy, who is nineteen (not sure how old Jack is, but we're going to estimate 40+).  He invited us to a bar, and then got a panicked look on his face when our director said that she was the only one who was of age - to drink, that is.

Jim Farmer, festival director of  Out on Film in Atlanta.  Apparently Atlanta is a really good place to be gay; like a tiny island oasis in The South.  The Atlanta film festival picked up "Hear Me Now," the documentary about the Deaf/Queer community that a group from this class made last year (incidentally, they are also going to New York, Philadelphia, St. Petersburg, and the Czech Republic, if I understand everything correctly).  He was a complete Southern gentleman and did not hit on our sound guy.

Mark Freeman, director of "Transgender Tuesdays," a documentary about the first public health clinic to offer sex-change hormones (I'm not sure if that is the most politically correct term; I forget what he used).  He went off on some long-winded tangents, but I think we got some great sound bites.  I think he mentioned a partner, so he did not overtly hit on our sound guy, but did give him a hug.

Yes, it does bother me a little that all our interviewees are white gay men.  We tried to get the women who directed "Call Me Kuchu," but though they were interested (which is honor enough for me), they were also really busy and we couldn't get any scheduled that worked for both of us.  Our director also scored Susan Stryker, who is some kind of transgender feminist goddess, but she cancelled on us last minute.  So we're stuck with the white gay guys, who are still interesting.

Touristy stuff I have done: 

Um.  I've been around the Castro and the Haight.  Seen a lot of naked people.  Mosly ugly old naked men; apparently nudity is legal here, but not regulated.  I've eaten sushi twice.  I found the best cookie store ever, which also happens to sell underwear.  Went into some pipe stores with other people - I don't smoke, but I can admire the glasswork.  Oh, and I found a store that sells nothing but yarn, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in every different material and color you can imagine.  I got some greenish-bluish stuff that was made from seaweed, apparently.  Honestly, I kind of want to move here just for the yarn.  I think I've pretty much settled on Monterey for grad school.  After that...well, we'll see.

I do know that I will never move to San Francisco.  Oh, I love it here, it's like a gay paradise.  But it's an island.  It's not the real world.  It's a pilgrimage site, where you see what can be, and then you take that back to freaking Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota with its stupid marriage amendment, because I don't feel comfortable being in a place that's just okay anymore. We need to spread the freaking love.