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.

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.

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.

In Defense of the Fantastic

Here's the thing:  My Creative Writing professor assigned us a short story to write.  It can be "about anything you want.  Except elves."  I had mised thoughts on that.  On one hand, I was thinking "I know, right?  I f***ing hate elves."  And on the other:  "Sure, elves are stupid, but they don't have to be.  You could write an elf detective story if you wanted to."

Hmm.  I'll have to get back to you on that.

The point is, fantasy is what you make it.  That is what it used to mean to "fantasize" - to come up with something completely new.  Not to blindly follow the  Tolkien-Eddings paradigm.  Tolkien knew what he was doing when he wrote and epic quest, drawing on all sorts of mythology stuff.  That is why the only thing resembling epic fantasy I can read anymore is The Last Rune series by Mark Anthony; because he, like Tolkien, pays attention to the epic myth, so that even though he tropes up the wazoo, he still manages to convey a sense of awesome.

That and I have two-inch thick nostalgia goggles.

So what if you don't like myths?  They're silly, outdated, nonsensical, boring.  Guess what?  You can still write fantasy.  Set it in modern day?  Urban fantasy!  Set it in a world with technology analogous to our own but they have MAGIC?  Go right ahead!  That is the whole point of fantasy.  You can do whatever the heck you want.

Take Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series.  Sure, it has its fair share of traipsing across the countryside, but there are saints and churches and random French and factories - and that's just background details she throws in to mess with your head.  Monette also throws out your expectations.  You think the wizard is the hero, but he goes insane and has to be dragged across the countryside by his half-brother, and once he gets better you think they're going to be all buddy-buddy, but the wizard is a complete douchebag in the second book, and the one character who is pure evil does not have any dastardly plots to take over the world.  There are no epic battles.  Felix and Mildmay have enough on their hands just trying to save themselves, without saving the world.

In the same vein Sarah Micklem's Firethorn has nothing whatsoever to do with traditional fantasy.  She does all her own worldbuilding, the characters are mostly jerks, and even the ones that are a bit nicer are very not okay by modern standards - but it works in-universe.  The magic is so subtly done you sometimes forget it is there - about all there is is that the main character can see in the dark - and the religion is so intricate I need to start a new sentence.  There are two main types of religion in fantasy.  The pantheon that doesn't do anything, and the annoyingly meddlesome pantheon.  Firethorn has both.  Seriously.  The characters attribute events to divine intervention appropriately, but the reader can still shake her head and say "You silly pagan," if so desired.

And now for the counterexample.

Havemercy.

It is essentially Doctrine of Labyrinths fanfic.  Sure, they made their own world, but they wanted to do esactly what Sarah Monette did.  There's the gay wizard, but he doesn't go insane, and his love affair reads like a slash.  There are the long-lost brothers, who have nothing at stake in their relationship.  All the authors really made up was mechanical dragons, and that is not enough to support the overlarge cast of underdeveloped characters.

Now, what did they do wrong?  They did not write fantasy.  They wrote paradigm, only instead of Tolkien-Eddings, they just used Sarah Monette.  But they completely missed the point.  In copying the elements, they neglected to copy the style.  Tolkien wrote travelogues, so he knew how to write traipsing across the country (your milage may vary).  Monette knows everything there is about the Elizabethan era, and she reads nonfiction everything for fun.  Micklem read army survival handbooks and memoirs - her whole first book is an army waiting for a war.  Not one to save the world.  And the war does not even start until the next book.  The problem with Havemercy is that the authors did not know what they were writing; they just blindly followed what they though they should be writing.  Take the gay character.  Did any of your gay friends hook up because they were thrown into awkward physical situations by the writer?  It sounds like an oxymoron, but fantasy needs to be realistic. 

Sure, you make up a few rules, but humanity remains the same, and that is the strength of fantasy.  Fiction deals mostly in the realm of what is.  Yes, there is a certain amount of imagination in coming up with it, and you do actually face many of the same issues with worldbuilding, but in fantasy, you don't have to match the real world.  It is more than just laziness; you can escape the usual explanations and arrive at deeper truths.  Anything is possible.  Anything. 

Take advantage of it.

What Was I Thinking?

Hello Hello!  I'm still here.  I don't know if you are, though.  Ah well.  I don't take blogging seriously, like some people I've met.  I believe I'm going to consider this my training blog, so that when I'm a published writer and people actually care what I have to say, then I'll know how to say things worth saying.

Blah blah blah aside, I'm doing better and worse on the writing front.  Worse, because I haven't written anything of significance in...well, I'm not even sure.  Since I decided to finally put that nameless Baleful Polymorph that I'd been working on since high school out of its misery and be DONE WITH IT FOR REAL THIS TIME.  I am now free to work on my multitude of side stories that are all so much more interesting! 

...

...

You know, despite being a hideous monster with a broken plot that had gone through so many versions it didn't even know what it was anymore...I don't really feel the same sort of dedication for anything else.  Maybe it was just my age, and now I realize it was crap, I'm hard pressed to come up with something new that isn't.  At this point I'm tempted to take it out of storage, dust off the pieces, and see if there's anything I can stitch together.  But I can't.  It's dead.  As it should be and it's time to move on.

I did say I was doing better, though, and here's why:  I'm taking Creative Writing.  Yep.  I displaced some poor Creative Writing major who won't be able to take any actual CW classes for another semester.  Eh.  They have so many generals and literature components they won't really fall behind.  It seems that a lot of the people in that class aren't CW majors either, so it's a nice laid-back atmosphere for me to finally rid myself of this damn phobia.

For those who haven't been following, I have an absolute terror of sharing my writing with other people - what I like to term "page fright."  What I noticed the first time I had to read a poem in that class, however, is that it was mostly physiological.  I was twitchy and tense and kept fidgeting with a yo-yo while I took deep breaths and tried to keep my vision from blurring.  You know, like I was on the verge of a panic attack.  Only I wasn't actually scared.  It was weird.  And they liked my poem.  Better than some of the others.  A lot of the others.  I'm not going to say there are some bad writers in that class, but some are better than others.

So I think I'll be able to kick this habit, since it seems to be a Pavlovian reflex more than an emotional response.  Problems:  It's exhausting.  Writing a poem every week. Reading twenty poems a week.  What was I thinking?  I'm a prose writer.  I'm sick of poetry, and we're not even halfway through the poetry unit.  There's only one short story required for the class, and  - best part - the professor will not accept fantasy. 

Now, if his rationale had been that traditional High Fantasy requires a great deal of worldbuilding that does not work well in short works - okay.  I can accept that.  But no, he just doesn't like fantasy because he thinks it's crap.  This guy, by the way, writes crime fiction.  Murder mystery detective stories.  Room to judge?  I don't think so.  He also refuses trashy paranormal romance - but you know that several girls are going to write trashy mundane romances anyway.

 Does it matter if a stupid girl is in love with a stupid angsty hipster or a stupid angsty vampire?  At least if there's a vampire, you know that someone's going to bleed eventually.  And you know, just bcause a story is a paranormal romance does not mean it has to be trashy - people just write with that assumption.  The thing is, there are some good mundane stories about lovers - The Time-Traveller's Wife, The Gargoyle - okay, I lied when I said mundane.  But this just proves the point I was going to make anyway!  Fantastical elements do not automatically make a story crap!  It is how you use them that determines the quality of your story.

Better stop now, I'm rambling.  I shall return anon!

The Plague Episode

Have you noticed in series that are longer than trilogies, the authors seemed stumped for that many sub-villains and minor conflicts and will throw in a plague, just to change things up?  Generally of a magical cause, and the hero traipses about the countryside some more until he finds the cure, and everything's fine by the time the next book rolls around.  Unless there has been a token death in the party.  Surprisingly, this is not a trope - there is a "Plague," a "Mystical Plague," and a "Find the Cure," but none are quite what I am talking about here in terms of the episode.

As anyone who has read Albert Camus' The Plague or has a decent knowledge of history (or even current events) is well aware, plagues...don't exactly work like that.  People get sick.  And they go to the resident witch-doctors, who are stumped, but do the best they can.  More people get sick.  The town goes into quarantine.  Fear.  Boredom.  More fear.  More boredom.  Unless you're actually a doctor, but even then finding treatments, cures, and vaccines is really tricky even with modern medical technology.

There is no magical cure, because there is no magical cause. That does not stop people from trying.  The Jews got blamed for the Black Death in Europe - partly because they were the only people washing their hands and so weren't getting sick right away.  This led to lynchings and hate crimes.  After all, what is a hate crime but fear+boredom?  Nothing like a crisis to fuel xenophobia.

The miracle cure is pure wish-fulfillment; sickness is an enemy we cannot fight, and we humans don't deal well with helplessness.  Even in modern western society, we have flus and cancers - we can take preventative measures, but sometimes not even that is enough.  Illness is something universal that has a profound impact on the human psyche - and yet much of modern fantasy literature boils it down to a cure-Macguffin.  This happens in part because the plague is a single episode, not the story in itself as Camus made it.  It lessens the impact.

Dear fantasy writers, if you are going to write a plague story, read Camus and not any of the following.  While Novik is a historian-goddess and has probably read Camus and more, I am still approaching the fourth Temeraire book with caution, as it seems to be that series' plague-episode, and this is usually what Plague Episodes look like:

Plague Episodes in Fantasy Literature:

Temple of the Winds (Sword of Truth book 4) by Terry Goodkind – a witch releases a magical plague from a box to mess with the hero.  The hero and his girlfriend are forced to marry other people in order to cure the plague.  It doesn’t really make sense in context.  The hero gets the plague in the end, but he gets better.  One of the token lesbians dies.

Briar’s Book (Circle of Magic book 4) by Tamora Pierce – a careless witch dumps some magical toxic waste in the sewers, starting a plague. Luckily, the plucky kids notice things that lead the cleverer adults to a cure.  They’re healer-mages, so it works.  A friend of the main character who only appears in that book dies.  The main character mentor gets sick, but he calls her back from the edge of death.  It’s a kid’s book.  Curiously, this breaks my aforementioned pattern by being the last book in the quartet, but the stories are self-contained and switch viewpoint character for each.  Also interesting that there seem to be a lot of book fours.  "Four" is a homonym with "Death" in Chinese.

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods (Underland Chronicles book 3) by Suzanne Collins – yes, that Suzanne Collins.  Gregor and his companions go on a quest to find a plague, then find out someone dropped a test tube in a lab where the “good guys” were designing a bioweapon.  Gregor’s bat and mother get sick, but neither die (it is Suzanne Collins though; it’s just that she saves the heartbreaking death for the last book).  No named characters die of the plague that I recall.

The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon book 2) by D.J. Machale – turns out to actually be a mass poisoning by the villain intending to start a war.  Only book two so plot is still formulaic.  Secondary character’s parents die, but he’s supposed to be an orphan because of his destiny, so they would have vanished somehow anyway.

The Keep of Fire (The Last Rune book 2) by Mark Anthony – a plague that causes people to burst into flames is affecting both worlds.  Hero and companions travel to title location and send the radioactive magical rock that is causing the plague into space, thus ending the plague.  It makes sense in context.  Main character’s bestie in our world dies, which is sad.  Other plot-relevant people get sick and die.

Lady Friday (Keys to the Kingdom book 6) by Garth Nix – embarassingly enough, I don’t really remember.  I think the title character was causing the Sleepy Plague, and once she was defeated…there was an extra step in there.  It didn’t just go away.  Main character’s friend got sick, but got better and rallied the defense in our world and took care of the plague victims.

Salamandastron (Redwall) by Brian Jacques – the inhabitants of Redwall abbey get sick with a mysterious illness, and Thrugg the otter journeys to a mythical mountain to find a mythical flower guarded by a mythical eagle which is the only cure.  He finds it of course, and the eagle is nice enough to fly it back for him.  It’s Redwall, so there is some token death, though the token death occurs in a different subplot.

Warriors by Erin Hunter – a recurring subplot where it is actually done well.  Cats get sick.  Sometimes a lot at the same time.  Sometimes they die.  Sometimes there are herbs.  Sometimes the herbs are not enough.  No questing for a special cure to a special illness.

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner – as a joke when people would ask her “What happened next?” she would say “Oh, the next year there was a diphtheria outbreak and they all died.”  Which, in a pre-industrial pseudo-medieval society, is not entirely unlikely.  Though she did eventually write a sequel that was devoid of a diphtheria outbreak.

What Should Theater Look Like and What Should Theater Be About?

Above are the two driving questions for my Theater History class that I am currently taking for a fine arts GE.  It's not that bad of a class, even though the professor has a tendency to analyze things for us and not encourage discussion and argument against her; I'm bored, but that's why I crochet.  No, the problem arises when we do three plays in a row about race relations, and that is the sum total of our look at American theater.  See, apparently "being American" means what race you are and how you're being oppressed.

There is a quote from August Wilson which I would like to paraphrase and dispute.  He argued against colorblind casting, claiming that it was devaluing African-American identity, and that instead there should be more plays written by blacks about blacks.  That way, black people would learn to respect their black identity.

While I respect the sentiment, and can agree it was probably appropriate for the times, I would like to bring up one point - namely, myself.  Am I even going to see the German-Chinese lesbian identity validated on the stage or in print?  Probably not.  The bigger question for me, though, is that if I did find a story that was not my own about a German-Chinese lesbian in America, would it mean anything to me?  Would that character really have anything to do with me?  Would this hypothetical character be obsessed with languages?  Would she be a ruthless literary critic?  A laconic feminist?  Would she have struggles with identity and independence that have nothing to do with her race or sexuality?

I don't think so.  I think that I am more than my race, ethnicity, and sexuality.

It bothers me when people try to portray themselves and their characters solely as representations of their race.  Yes, more racial and cultural awareness is good, but the whole purpose of racial inclusion is to show that people who aren't white Christian heterosexual able-bodied males are people too.  That does not happen if your black character is a cardboard cutout of a black person, and not a fully developed person with dark skin and African heritage.

Compare the last two plays we had to read:  "Zoot Suit" and "Cloud Nine."  "Zoot Suit" bored and frustrated me.  It is a whiny minority play, about Mexican-Americans in the 1940's bitching about how they're being oppressed and thrown in jail just because they're Mexican.  There is one line that goes something like "You just don't understand the Chicano people."  To which I reply "No, I don't, because I haven't seen any of your culture or personality, I'm just hearing how you're discriminated against.  I don't understand you any better than I did before."

Now, "Cloud Nine" focuses more on gender and sexuality than race, though there is a small racial component.  What "Cloud Nine" does is crossgender casting - Betty is played by a man, Edward is played by a woman; also, the black servant is played by a white man.  This shows how gender (and race) roles are just that - roles that we play.  It questions the very institutions.  That is so much more interesting and thought-provoking than "Look at us!  We're being oppressed!"  Is it not?

Re-emerging Into Reality

You may have noticed that I have been somewhat less diligent about posting in this month of November.  That is because I have been participating in a cult group madness challenge called NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month.  50,000 words.  30 days.  One writer.

Okay, not one writer.  That is what is so wonderful about NaNo.  Writing is by nature a solitary activity, and sitting in a group of people all absorbed in their own laptops writing their own novels does not sound like a party by anyone's standards.  Still, it is a great way to stay motivated.  I tend to write in creative spurts, but I have a hard time finishing.  I get about half or two-thids of the way through, and the story starts to sag, and I start to see all the places I went wrong, and I want to start over and fix things.  And I get to a point where I don't know where to go next and I don't really care.

But with NaNoWriMo, every word counts.  Rule #1 is DO NOT DELETE.  Rule #2 is DO NOT GIVE UP.  I was up to being seven days behind, but I made up the difference in the last few weeks and pulled across the finish line with hours to spare.

I have done NaNo several times in the past, and this was a year of firsts for me.  It was the first year I made an outline the night before from a story I thought of that day.  It was the first time I threw out that outline on the first day and started with a story that had been smoldering in my head for a while.  And it is the first year that I re-started on the second day with a completely new story that had been gestating but I had not considered ready to be born; but it was my most viable option.  It is the first year I had no idea where the story was supposed to go.

That is another thing about NaNo.  It forces you to be creative.  For the first 20k or so I was writing myself in circles.  Then I added witch hunters.  I never thought I would until I realized that I needed something new.  And there they were.  That got me close to 40k before that arc came down.  The rest was a first person account filling in the gaps of the first arc.  Note:  First person in lovely for wordiness.  You can throw in so much opinionation and asides and rants.  It's wonderful.

Then I was still about a thousand short and spat out half a bonus scene with the witch hunters.

Every year after that first one I have told myself that I won't do NaNo - I don't have time, I don't any good ideas, I'm in the middle of another project - and yet somehow I always do.  And I don't regret it.  Any of it.  Even though all my drafts so far have been shit, and I don't very much think this one is any different, I wrote that damn novel.  I have proven to myself that I can can overcome my creative barriers.  It does not take skill to write, after all.  Skill can be learned.  It takes determination and persistence, and I definitely leveled up in that area this month.

Now for a rest. This is also the first year my wrist actually started twinging (at the 47k mark, when I was starting to think I might actually make it).  That has not stopped me from starting a new crochet project.  I want to get back to my translations - I've been making trips to the career center to see what the heck I can do with my life, and translator is still one of my options.  I also want to start reading books again.  Am halfway through the third Temeraire book and also for some reason have a strong urge to re-read the entire Chronicles of Chrestomanci.  Oh yeah, finals are coming up too.

Blah blah words blah oh wait, I don't have to count them anymore.

Bisexuals in Literature

This post was inspired by reading Libba Bray's novel Beauty Queens, which is awesome and hilarious and the good kind of feminism, even if it does have diversity issues.  Like the fact that the only characters with distinct personalities are the white ones; the supporting cast the Black Girl, the Indian Girl (who become besties based on the fact they are both not white, which is actually played straight rather well), the Tomboyish Lesbian, the Transgender Girl, the Deaf Girl, etc.  Whereas the white characters that the story spends a (admittedly slight) majority of the time with include the Friendless Intellectual, the Psychopathic Perfectionist, the Wild Girl, and the Dumb Blond With A Heart Of Gold.  Y'know, actual personality types instead of just Issues.

But today's rant is about the Bisexual Girl, who in Beauty Queens doubles as the Deaf Girl.

What happens in the book is that a plane full of beauty pageant queens crashes on a deserted island (think Lord of the Flies with girls).  At one point, the Lesbian is wandering through the jungle, when she rescues the Deaf Bisexual Girl from being eaten by a snake, and falls in love.  Before she has any inkling that this girl might not be straight. 

Problems so far:

1.  The cardinal rule of being gay is DON'T FALL IN LOVE WITH A STRAIGHT PERSON.  For us, the question "Are they gay?"  has to come before "Do I like them?"  Granted, this might just be a me-thing, but it always irks me when I read a book where a girl falls in love with a girl before she has reason to thinks he might not be straight.  It just doesn't work like that.  To put it simply, heterosexuality is a real turn-off.

2.  If I were wandering through the jungle and ran across someone being eaten by a snake and had to rescue them, what are the chances we would have compatible sexualities?  If it were me, it would turn out to be a gay man.  Seriously.

Anyway, the Lesbian falls for the Bisexual Deaf Girl, who, as she is also a dancer, incites some oddly homoerotic moments with the Lesbian, who draws a fantasy comic with her as a superhero rescuing her love, when the BDG walks in on her, sees the comic, and they make out after only a brief:  "Are you gay?"  "Are you?"

3.  I'm not going to knock the coincidence.  The entire premise of the book is ridiculous, and it only gets wackier from their, with government conspiracies and insane third-world dictators.  But since BDG is established as bi, she really should have realized that asking the Lesbian to dance with her is rather flirtatious.  And since the Lesbian is sort of dykish tomboyish, BDG ought to have suspected her of not being straight, even if the Lesbian could not ping on her because you can't tell with bi girls.

There are about two paragraphs dedicated to the fact that the Deaf Girl is bi. And when hot male pirates show up on the island, she doesn't seem to get the slightest bit of enjoyment from the sight of all that man-candy.  Sure, she's dating the token Lesbian, but she can still look, can't she?

4.  Here we get into the problems extant in the wider literature.  YA authors who are big on diversity will throw in a token bi character to date their token gay character, so they can be super-extra representative.  The problems arise when bi characters are simply treated as gay characters.  Exhibit A, Alex Sanchez's masterpiece of the 90's, Rainbow Boys.  The Token Bi here actually dumps his girlfriend to be with the gay main character.  Bisexual, sure.  Bisexual training wheels maybe.  A later book mentions him grinning at the sight of a naked girl, but that's about all we get.

Exhibit B:  David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, and if you ever want to gag on a rainbow made of pure sugar, read that book.  Anyway, the bi guy there serves absolutely no function with regards to the plot, and has a backstory of making out with the main character and then claiming he was taken advantage of and really likes girls.  This is supposed to be in a fantastical super-tolerant queer utopia.  He can't be like "Oh, I'm bi, I guess that's okay"?

Exhibit C:  Brent Hartinger's Geography Club.  This one is a girl.  Who is dating a lesbian.  I believe in later books she crushes on a girl.  But she keeps referencing the fact that she is bi, and talks about hot guys with her gay bestie.

The root of the problem, I hypothesize, is that it is difficult to realistically portray a character who is attracted to both guys and girls without making them a slut.  A character gets only one designated love interest per story, after all, and a love triangle would be tricky because resolving it would make it seem like the author were favoring one orientation over another.

Solutions?

1.  Spend time talking about the bisexual character's emotions and development and coming out.  Bisexuals never come out!  Why is that?  Is it somehow not necessary?  Are they not a "real" queer unless they are dating a member of the same gender?  Is it because bisexual has the word "sex" in it?  I don't know.  But think about your heterosexual characters, and how they react to characters of the opposite gender who are not their designated love interest.  There can be sexual tension without a romantic subplot.

2.  A bi girl can date a guy, and still be active in queer rights stuff.  Trust me, I know people personally.  They don't lose their gay if they start dating someone of the opposite gender.  In fact, in brings up interesting plot points.  How does the boyfriend feel?  Is he weirded out, or chill?

3.  Heck, you could have two bisexuals of any gender combination date each other.  That would be an interesting relationship dynamic.

4.  Back to Beauty Queens:  When I saw the two token queers were going to hook up, I groaned and came up with an alternative subplot involving a token bi and a token lesbian.  Suppose it is a bitchy lipstick lesbian.  In fact, she might be the Psychotic Perfectionist.  Then, there's also a bi girl, one of the quiet ones who silently hates the lesbian's guts.  *Gasp!*  No token queer solidarity/romance?  Unthinkable!  If this were to happen, I would not even mind if the bi girl were crushing on a straight girl, as long as she eventually got over her.  Maybe hooked up with one of the hot pirates.  And then the lesbian can date some chick in the epilogue after she becomes a nice person, to prove that homosexual relationships are okay too. 

Seriously, not all gays like each other.  You can't put a pair of us on a deserted island and expect us to automatically mate, any more than you could put a heterosexual guy and girl on an island and expect them to.

(On the plus side, they don't hookup ever after; they break up amicably and the bi girl is dating a guy in the epilogue, while the lesbian is married.  So it ended up not being too bad.)

What Not To Read

My latest obsession, it seems, is dragonriders and gender roles.  So, in order to make my research complete, I tracked down what might be the only book by a male about dragonriders, that is not a subversion or Eragon:  Dragonmaster,  by Chris Bunch.  It has been most educational.

Things I have learned from two chapters of Bunch:

1.  Do not use run-on sentences, they are not, and will never be, your friend.  Fragments, only sparingly when effective.

“Somewhere in the crags just above the village, and Hal thought he knew just where from his solitary, but not lonely, hill explorations, the beast had its nest.  The nest where dragons had hatched their young for over a century.”

2.  Do not overly smeerp.  Worldbuilding is your friend, and if you can’t be bothered to think about how your society works, then you should not be writing fantasy.

“Naturally, we told them to go away or we’d call the warder…Tomorrow, before dawn, I’ll ride for the city and hire the best advocate I can…That’ll put a bit of a stave in their wheel.”

Suppose he had written:

“Naturally, we told them to go away or we’d call the police...Tomorrow, before dawn, I’ll drive into the city and hire the best lawyer I can…That’ll put a bit of a wrench in their works.”

Creating a medieval fantasyland is more than just replacing any modern references with period-sounding alternatives (though a toothbrush is still a toothbrush*).  Apparently, even in this world where the poor are really oppressed, there is still a sort of justice system that even a poor restaurant owner tavern keeper can call on.  Which never comes up again (presumably).

3.  Your main character is not an author avatar.  Go play a video game for that.  Your main character has his (or her) own personality and ambitions.  Don’t have them wander around aimlessly until they find plot.

“He’d been offered other steady work in the two years since he’d left the stony mining village, but had never accepted, not sure of the reason.”

The reason?  The author needs you to not have any attachments so you can drop everything and chase the plot, whenever it should appear.  He also needs you to keep moving so that you eventually find the plot.  If you’re going to do that to your character, at least give them a real reason to be a rootless wanderer.  It also doubles as character-building.

4.  I don’t care how beer is made.  The point of the chapter is that Hal gets drunk and tries to ride a dragon.  We don’t need digressions into beer-making at the hops-picking harvest festival thingy that is never going to be mentioned again.  There’s worldbuilding, and then there’s relevancy.

*A note about toothbrushes in fantasyland:  They don’t often exist.  Occasionally I have run across a mention of scrubbing teeth with baking soda (once, in 10,000 page series), or “tooth-sticks,” whatever those might be.  They do seem rather modern to be in a pseudo-medieval world.  However, according to Wikipedia, methods of dental cleaning have been around since 3000 B.C.  Some ancient cultures chewed twigs from certain trees, and around the 14^th century A.D. toothbrushes with animal-hair bristles were in use in parts of Asia.  However, it is most likely that only those of wealth and status would have the luxury for that.  Toothbrushes were not mass-produced in Europe until the late 18^th century, but the word itself dates from 1690.  Interestingly, tooth-brushing did not catch on in the U.S. until after WWII, when soldiers were required to brush their teeth every day.

In other words, if you want your characters to brush their teeth in fantasyland, you can damn well have them brush their teeth.  It’s your world.  The humble toothbrush does a good job of illustarting how difficult it is to make a convincing fantasyland; you have to consider every aspect of daily life, up to and including brushing one’s teeth.

Quoth the Rowling, Pottermore

Sorry about the title.  Couldn't resist.  Despite which, I still don't have a clue what Pottermore is.

I am the Harry Potter generation, defined here as someone who 1) waited for a letter from Hogwarts, 2) went to a midnight book release.  So I read it.  I liked it.

Then it became popular.

If HP had not become so popular, I can see two ways my life might be different.  1)  I would like it more than I do now, treasure it for its nostalgia purposes, immerse myself in the world.  Or 2)  I'd stick it in the back of the shelf and forget all about it.

As far as stories go, it is rather forgettable.  There's a kid who discovers he has special powers and has to stop some evil dude from doing evil stuff.  The characters are rather bland, rather stupid at times, and the magic stuff (wands and broomsticks etc.), which start out as delightfully whimsical, become more narmy as the series grows darker.

That last paragraph could get me burned at the stake.  Or at least accused of being a snob (why yes, I am still bitter).

Stop hating on Harry, he says.  It's just a kid's book.

Just a kid's book.

So too is Warriors.  So too is Artemis Fowl.  So too is almost...every...single...frickin'...thing...by DIANA WYNNE JONES.  And did I mention Narnia?

The problem of the matter is that Harry hits puberty.  Narnia is like a roller coaster; you must be less than this high to ride.  Rowling, with a book series that spanned seven years, had two choices: She could pretend puberty does not exist and keep her target demographic as 8-10 year olds.  Or she could anticipate her aging readers and transition her books to YA.

And that, I think, is why HP became so popular.  It aged with the readers.  Not well (see Potter Puppet Pals Wizard Angst), but it is the only series I can think of that started out with a child protagonist and ended with a teenager that was written to act like a teenager.  While most other books have to rely on new generations after the old one ages, the HP generation stuck with those books.

I can't think of many other reasons HP became so popular, though  I suppose I could hazard a few more guesses...

-The action took place in a school.  Everyone knows about schools.  But this was a magic school, so it was interesting.  Fantasy stories have a tendency to take the reader away from the familiar and recognizeable.  Lots of forests.  Castles.  Places most people don't live.

-The magic was very generic.  Nix had his light magic (or bells, but Sabriel isn't as nostalgic to me), Duane had her mystical Speech, Jones had...whatever Jones had.  But to the average layperson, the connotations that go with the word "magic" are still waving a wand and mumbling a few funny words.  So an ordinary person (for want of a better term) could pick up HP and recognize the magic.

And that's it.  I mean, does anyone really care about any of the characters' personalities?  Besides Sirius, that is?  No, because the characters simply play their roles as Designated Hero with a saving-people thing, Designated Sidekick who backs him up in everything, and Designated Smart One who dispenses plot-relevant information and gives advice for the hero to ignore.  Oh, and Designated Love Interest to...be fallen in love with.  Though in all fairness, Ginny seems to be able to do a better job getting Harry to listen to reason than Hermione does.

I did not realize I was quite this bitter.  I know that the world is not fair, and that Jones, who is the superior being, will never be as rich or famous as Rowling.  And I wouldn't want her too.  I would rather keep her private, personal, something I can form an instant connection over with a person.  And I have resigned myself to the fact that HP has altered the face of fantasy forever.  If I say I like fantasy, I usually hear a response like "Oh, like Harry Potter?  Like Lord of the Rings?  Like Terry Pratchett?"  And the answer is no; like Sarah Monette and Diana Wynne Jones and Galen Beckett and Meredith Ann Pierce.  Books by people who like magical stuff, but don't feel bound by genre constraints or the expectations of the readers. 

Dammit, I guess I am a snob.  I still remember those few years when fantasy was mine, and the choice was to feel like a freak for reading about magic, or to be proud of being different.  So when the public eye turned on my secret niche, the only choice was to seek deeper obscurity.  Or maybe I'm just irked that for most people, HP is the definition of fantasy, when it is so much more than that.

Deconstructions

I predict that within 10 years, Hollywood will have made a movie about Osama bin Laden's death.  It makes a great story, after all.  Those rugged, underdog, freedom-loving Americans taking down that evil warlord.

And now for something (almost) completely different.

We know the formulas.  We know what to expect from your typical action movie, romantic comedy, superhero movie, or fairy tale.  That is why "historical" based movies (as well as movies that come from books, or in fact any other source material) suffer so badly.  They have to be shoehorned into the mold, often distorted beyond recognition.

However, there has been a recent trend among moviemakers and novel writers of deconstructing the familiar motifs.  With varying degrees of success.  Superhero stories with a sympathetic villain, for instance.  Or fractured fairy tales.  These deconstructions fall into three types.

1)  Satirical deconstruction, in which the story is written using the formula in order to make fun of itself.  Slapstick comedy.

2)  Brutal Deconstruction, in which the story is shown to have a darker, often gorier side.  Keyword, ick.

3)  Practical Deconstruction, in which the story is played straight, but tries to act more realistic.  Focus on characters.

And if you don't want to take my word for it, I have a long list of examples.

The main culprits for the formula/deconstruction trap are variants of the Hero's Journey - namely, Superheroes, Fairy Tales, and fantasy literature.  For instance, a satirical deconstruction of the superhero genre would be...well take your pick.  I have not seen "Kick-Ass," but from the trailers I believe it one of these.  What I am familiar with is the film "Mystery Men."  A ragtag group of heroes with some awkward superpowers defeat a not very memorable villain.  Played for laughs.

A brutal deconstruction, on the other hand, is Watchmen, both the film and the graphic novel. No superpowers, just the silly costumes and crime-fighting.  The characters are set along a scale of pathetic idealist to villain who kind of has a point.

The closest thing to a practical deconstruction that I am familiar with is "The Incredibles."  Yes, it follows the typical superhero pattern, but it has a few deconstructive elements.  It might almost be considered a family drama. 

Now for Fairy Tales.  You know what I'm going to say.  Yep.  Shrek (Note that "Fairy Tale" in this sense is more of the Disneyfied version, rather than actual folk legends).  In fact, Shrek was created by a disgruntled former Disney employee and is essentially a declaration of war on the entire Disney franchise.  Need I say more?

A brutal deconstruction is, without a doubt, Gregory Maguire.  Author of Wicked.  No, not the musical - that got re-Disneyfied until it wasn't sure what it was supposed to be anymore and sucked.  Good music, though. 

A practical deconstruction is harder to pin down.  I have not seen "Enchanted," so cannot offer any opinion on that.  Perhaps "Ever After."  She marries the prince after talking and having an actual relationship with him, and becomes a princess to actually take care of the people in the kingdom.

And of course my passion, fantasy.  You may have gathered by now that as much as I love this genre, I love to hate it as well. 

Terry Pratchett is definitely the iconic satirical deconstructor.  I have only read one of his books, so I don't have much to say about it, but there isn't really that much to say.

Brutal deconstructions of fantasy have been gaining in popularity.  Terry Goodkind was the first one I have been aware of.  Before he went all crazy anti-socialist and still thought he was writing a fantasy epic.  Very...detailed battle scenes.  Other writers such as Mercedes Lackey sometimes attempt to do this, and heap misfortune and trauma upon their characters, but somehow at the end, all the important people get to ride away on their pretty white horse with seemingly no lasting psychological harm.  This is a case of Failed Deconstruction.

My very favorite books ever - The Last Rune series, by Mark Anthony - is a practical deconstruction of fantasy.  In fact, it is hardly a deconstruction at all.  The story is played completely straight, with the ordinary protagonist from the Real World becoming the prophecized Hero who has to save the Pseudo-Medieval European Fantasyland from a Dark Lord.  The reasons that this series is not cliche garbage are many and subtle, so I will only mention one:  Anthony treats his characters like real people.  All of them.  He also (okay, two) strikes a very delicate balance between "Good always wins," and "The world sucks."

What did any of this have to do with bin Laden? 

The key to a practical deconstruction is making the story realistic, which also has the effect of making the story complex.  But complex stories don't make money.  When we go see a movie for an afternoon's entertainment, we want to be entertained.  We don't want to think.  That is why formulas are so useful.  The audience already knows what is going to happen and can enjoy the movie without any major worries. 

Bin Laden's death changes nothing, and I don't have to know anything about politics to be certain of that.  Al-Qaeda is not going to fall apart like the army of orcs at the end of Lord of the Rings.  But America is so locked into our ideals/formulas/tropes/narratives that we fail to realize that.  Real life is a messy and boring deconstruction of fiction that nobody wants to read.