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.

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.