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Kris Longknife: Awesome
I'm reading a series called Kris Longknife, in which the female protag is, frankly, awesome. Totally the anti-fandom: female, physically capable, generally "unfeminine", military, gets into inadvertant trouble, saves the day every time.
Damn, I enjoy reading her!
Although I wish the author would get a better editor. Questions should end in question marks, Mike! And although he hasn't yet committed the deeply egregious error of "should of", given some of his other grammatical mishaps, I kind of expect to see it in the next book.
Still, Kris is awesome. And learning what it means to buy into the family legend, and paying the price of leadership as the books go along. There are at least six books in the series, and I hope he keeps going. (I'll get around to Honor Harrington one of these days, but I really, really like Kris.)
Anyway, I was at a dinner with geeky friends the other night and we were discussing books we enjoy reading. I mentioned fantasy/sci-fi and one of the guys said, "but would you read it if it wasn't cool tech and space gadgets?" And the answer was, "yes, I would." Because the gadgets are cool, but the relationships between characters, the possibilities of 'what if', and the depictions of heroism and leadership while in crisis are the bits that I really like: the bits that make us human and 'more' and not just animals with technology and language.
But it got me thinking on the way home from dinner: the reason I read sci-fi/fantasy ties in with my id.
On Id-fic
There's the Showing Your Id meme running around the traps (vis a vis: "Am I showing my id when I write fanfic?") It reminds me of a couple of bulletproof kink memes I saw on my f-list a while back: a couple of authors who identified the tropes that made them happy and how they made them happy and which stories showed signs of those tropish influences.
It was a good read and very interesting to read in these writers whose works I really enjoy, but it got me thinking about my bulletproof kinks and the stories or characters that hit my buttons. I'm still working through it, but I've identified at least one set of tropes that hit my id, almost every time.
To tell you the truth, I've always suspected that my id doesn't resemble that of very many people in fandom. Even when I'm supporting popular pairings, I still tend not to write the popular stuff - the romantic, gooey, sappy, sticky stuff. (Which I'm not against: sometimes you want a sugar buzz. I've written sugar buzz fic! It's just not what my id wants most of the time.) I'm stuck way out on the rimworlds of the Id Universe, watching in bemusement as other people's id-riffic recs are brought over by the id-fic traders and stuck asking, "I don't suppose you have any non-geeky-female, female-focused het that isn't straight-up romance?" only to be told, "Uh, no. We don't deal in that sort of thing."
So. My id runs pretty much counter to the geeky, emotional, male, slashy, romantic angles that fandom loves, adores, and can't get enough of: non-geeky, emotionally reserved, female, non-romantic. (Note: non-romantic is not the same as non-sexual. My favourite female characters love sex with the guy(s) they love; they just don't really do champagne and roses. Unless there was a gun and cuffs in there, too.)
It figures that my id is a contrary bitch. She's my id, after all.
And this ties back in with why I tend to prefer sci-fi/fantasy over other genres.
On Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Women
In conventional, non-sci-fi/fantasy fiction, it's unusual to have women feature at all in the genres I enjoy, let alone have stories with a female protag in them. Stories with a female protag are usually the romance, drama, family politics, and life-choices. Which are all good stories to tell, too - they just don't hit my kinks the way stories with a female protag that address traditionally male-dominated genres do.
Spy, intrigue, political, warfare, technology, history stories are traditionally and predominantly about men. Because that's the way that it's been historically. And since it has the weight of history behind it, it's not a situation where it's easy to slip a female character in without having to address innate sexism and gender prejudice, societal assumptions and behaviours. It's very difficult to put female character into a non-romantic, functional role in the contemporary spy/intrigue/political/techno/warfare/historical genre without addressing a set of assumptions we make about females in the modern world, and most writers don't even attempt it. (I think they're wrong in not even trying to address it and adding to the problem, but that's another meta.)
This doesn't have to be the case in sci-fi/fantasy fiction. My favourite stories over the years have tended to be the ones where the women are either the primary focus of the story or the movers and shakers in their universes - political, social, military, intrigue. Sioned, Tobin, Feylin, and Sionell in Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince series; Sarra, Cailet, Glenin and all their secondary characters - even Anniyas - in Rawn's Exiles series; Tarma and Kethry in Mercedes Lackey's Oathbound series; Heris Serrano and Lady Cecilia, Esmay Suiza and Brun Meager in Elizabeth Moon's Serrano Legacy; Mara of the Acoma in Feist&Wurtz's Daughter Of The Empire series; Phedre no Delaunay, Kris Longknife, Eve Dallas...
Sure, female-centric sci-fi/fantasy has a long way to go before it achieves any kind of parity with male-centric sci-fi/fantasy - as in: light years, traversing galaxies, possibly a 'crossing the universe's worth of 'long way to go' - but there are more characters who hit my id in sci-fi/fantasy than there are likely to be in 'regular' fiction: women who are very much women with women's concerns and troubles, yet who aren't made to sit down and let the menz do all the heavy lifting in the narrative.
I'm reading a series called Kris Longknife, in which the female protag is, frankly, awesome. Totally the anti-fandom: female, physically capable, generally "unfeminine", military, gets into inadvertant trouble, saves the day every time.
Damn, I enjoy reading her!
Although I wish the author would get a better editor. Questions should end in question marks, Mike! And although he hasn't yet committed the deeply egregious error of "should of", given some of his other grammatical mishaps, I kind of expect to see it in the next book.
Still, Kris is awesome. And learning what it means to buy into the family legend, and paying the price of leadership as the books go along. There are at least six books in the series, and I hope he keeps going. (I'll get around to Honor Harrington one of these days, but I really, really like Kris.)
Anyway, I was at a dinner with geeky friends the other night and we were discussing books we enjoy reading. I mentioned fantasy/sci-fi and one of the guys said, "but would you read it if it wasn't cool tech and space gadgets?" And the answer was, "yes, I would." Because the gadgets are cool, but the relationships between characters, the possibilities of 'what if', and the depictions of heroism and leadership while in crisis are the bits that I really like: the bits that make us human and 'more' and not just animals with technology and language.
But it got me thinking on the way home from dinner: the reason I read sci-fi/fantasy ties in with my id.
On Id-fic
There's the Showing Your Id meme running around the traps (vis a vis: "Am I showing my id when I write fanfic?") It reminds me of a couple of bulletproof kink memes I saw on my f-list a while back: a couple of authors who identified the tropes that made them happy and how they made them happy and which stories showed signs of those tropish influences.
It was a good read and very interesting to read in these writers whose works I really enjoy, but it got me thinking about my bulletproof kinks and the stories or characters that hit my buttons. I'm still working through it, but I've identified at least one set of tropes that hit my id, almost every time.
To tell you the truth, I've always suspected that my id doesn't resemble that of very many people in fandom. Even when I'm supporting popular pairings, I still tend not to write the popular stuff - the romantic, gooey, sappy, sticky stuff. (Which I'm not against: sometimes you want a sugar buzz. I've written sugar buzz fic! It's just not what my id wants most of the time.) I'm stuck way out on the rimworlds of the Id Universe, watching in bemusement as other people's id-riffic recs are brought over by the id-fic traders and stuck asking, "I don't suppose you have any non-geeky-female, female-focused het that isn't straight-up romance?" only to be told, "Uh, no. We don't deal in that sort of thing."
So. My id runs pretty much counter to the geeky, emotional, male, slashy, romantic angles that fandom loves, adores, and can't get enough of: non-geeky, emotionally reserved, female, non-romantic. (Note: non-romantic is not the same as non-sexual. My favourite female characters love sex with the guy(s) they love; they just don't really do champagne and roses. Unless there was a gun and cuffs in there, too.)
It figures that my id is a contrary bitch. She's my id, after all.
And this ties back in with why I tend to prefer sci-fi/fantasy over other genres.
On Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Women
In conventional, non-sci-fi/fantasy fiction, it's unusual to have women feature at all in the genres I enjoy, let alone have stories with a female protag in them. Stories with a female protag are usually the romance, drama, family politics, and life-choices. Which are all good stories to tell, too - they just don't hit my kinks the way stories with a female protag that address traditionally male-dominated genres do.
Spy, intrigue, political, warfare, technology, history stories are traditionally and predominantly about men. Because that's the way that it's been historically. And since it has the weight of history behind it, it's not a situation where it's easy to slip a female character in without having to address innate sexism and gender prejudice, societal assumptions and behaviours. It's very difficult to put female character into a non-romantic, functional role in the contemporary spy/intrigue/political/techno/warfare/historical genre without addressing a set of assumptions we make about females in the modern world, and most writers don't even attempt it. (I think they're wrong in not even trying to address it and adding to the problem, but that's another meta.)
This doesn't have to be the case in sci-fi/fantasy fiction. My favourite stories over the years have tended to be the ones where the women are either the primary focus of the story or the movers and shakers in their universes - political, social, military, intrigue. Sioned, Tobin, Feylin, and Sionell in Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince series; Sarra, Cailet, Glenin and all their secondary characters - even Anniyas - in Rawn's Exiles series; Tarma and Kethry in Mercedes Lackey's Oathbound series; Heris Serrano and Lady Cecilia, Esmay Suiza and Brun Meager in Elizabeth Moon's Serrano Legacy; Mara of the Acoma in Feist&Wurtz's Daughter Of The Empire series; Phedre no Delaunay, Kris Longknife, Eve Dallas...
Sure, female-centric sci-fi/fantasy has a long way to go before it achieves any kind of parity with male-centric sci-fi/fantasy - as in: light years, traversing galaxies, possibly a 'crossing the universe's worth of 'long way to go' - but there are more characters who hit my id in sci-fi/fantasy than there are likely to be in 'regular' fiction: women who are very much women with women's concerns and troubles, yet who aren't made to sit down and let the menz do all the heavy lifting in the narrative.
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no subject
Interesting. I hope you continue writing on this vein of thought! Out of curiosity, how would you like to see them attempt to address it?
no subject
The simplest way is simply to 'Write Moar' as the meme goes. Write more women.
There was a post a week or two ago by
It's a start: write more women in non-feminine roles. Write more women in non-feminine situations. Write more women with personalities and hobbies that aren't stereotypically 'female'.
By the way, I went and looked at your journal and subscribed to it. I'm definitely interested in your topics, particularly young women characters in YA since I'm trying to write a YA novel with a female protag.
no subject
On a similar vein, I was thinking about Prince of Persia the other day and how it can be difficult to find a fantasy like that with a strong female in the lead role. So few female characters are placed in traditionally masculine roles without overt feminine characterization or sexualization attached to make her strength socially acceptable. (I actually have some news relating to this topic that I'll be sharing on my journal ASAP, so thank you for subscribing! I tend to talk a little less about YA than fantasy/romance, but the topics about it are neverending, especially since YA is so huge right now.)
no subject
Actually, fantasy/romance is a genre I like as well. My big beef with most of the romance genre tends to be that it still tends towards the 'big manly male' and the 'helpless, fainting female', where I tend to want an go-getter female paired with a guy who isn't threatened by her strength and energy.
no subject
My id runs pretty much counter to the geeky, emotional, male, slashy, romantic angles that fandom loves, adores, and can't get enough of: non-geeky, emotionally reserved, female, non-romantic.
I like this about your fic, actually, realizing that it's different than a lot of the stuff that's out there. Though, I didn't realize John/Teyla wasn't a popular pairing, so...
no subject
On the other hand, I am what I am, and my id is what it is.