women – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Fantasy from A to Z: L is for Love

What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me…)

Seriously, though, what counts as “love” in fantasy these days? The romantasy subgenre is taking the field by storm, but much of it seems to be outright pornography, at least to me. Back when Twilight was all the rage, I at least understood the romantic angle, even if I didn’t particularly care for it. But now, there’s all this stuff about mate-bonding, consent/non-consent, something called “the omega-verse,” and a weird hierarchy of various forms of bestiality that I frankly cannot follow at all.

I should take a few steps back, and perhaps abandon romantasy altogether. I’m sure there are plenty of non-pornographic books in that subgenre—in fact, I’m fairly certain that one of my old college friends, Charlie Holmberg, was a pioneer in it. Everything of hers that I’ve read is pretty good, and also quite understandable, even to a dopey guy like me.

Outside of romantasy (and paranormal romance, which it appears that romantasy has more or less cannibalized), the love stories are pretty straightforward. Epic fantasy in particular tends to have at least a couple of romantic subplots in every book—which makes sense, considering how expansive the subgenre is trying to be. After all, if you’re writing a story where the world itself is a major character, you’ve got to have at least a few good love stories in there too.

But as the internet has continued to spawn narrower and narrower niches and subcultures, all existing in their own little subcultures, things on the extremes have gotten… weird. And as the gender divide appears to be widening with each subsequent generation, especially in areas like politics and culture, it’s beginning to seem like we aren’t even speaking the same language, even when it comes to something as basic and essential as love.

Now, male-coded romances are pretty easy to understand (though I could be biased… I am a man, after all). It starts with a boy who really wants a girl. Like, really, really, really wants a girl. He likes her so much, he spends the whole book trying to get her—and by the end, he either wins her, or he realizes that he doesn’t actually want her, he wants this other girl he met along the way. If things get spicy, it’s all very straightforward and everyone generally has a good time. If there are issues with rape or non-consent, those are generally separate from the romantic subplot

And often, male-coded romances don’t even include much spicy content at all. Even Robert E. Howard’s original Conan the Barbarian stories were pretty mild, in terms of spiciness. Yes, there was usually a scantily-clad female love interest, described in such a way as to increase Howard’s chances of getting his story featured on the magazine cover (and thus earning double the pay). But when it came to the actual, you know, kissing and stuff, Howard never went into graphic detail. The most he would do was hide behind euphemisms like “he crushed her in his arms.” All of the ejaculations in his stories were saidisms—as in, “look out!” he ejaculated, waving his hands wildly (and you would be shocked how often he used “ejaculated” as a saidism—seriously, I think there’s at least one in every classic Conan story).

(Side note: just because Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories were pretty mild on the spiciness scale, that does not mean that subsequent authors kept it mild. Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp tended to keep it more in the vein of the original, but Robert Jordan’s Conan was… let’s just say, it was too much for me.)

And it used to be that female-coded romances were pretty simple, too. An ordinary, boring girl somehow finds herself the object of attraction between two incredibly powerful (and incredibly sexy) men from the other side of fairy, who are positively obsessed with her. However will she choose between them both? Oh, look—now they’re fighting each other to determine which one gets her. Stop fighting, you sexy fairy men! But seriously, however will she choose?

Somewhere along the line, that morphed into a thing called “reverse-harem,” which (as I understand it) is where the girl throws up her hands and decides that she can’t possibly choose between them, so she chooses them all. Which meant, of course, that the love triangles quickly turned into love dodecahedrons—since if you’re going to have a harem, you might as well fill it up with as many sexy fair men as you can.

And then somehow, things got really weird—and also, really toxic. According to Malcolm and Simone Collins (who know more about this subject than I do), some of the more toxic behaviors that romantasy normalizes include:

Fated or “mate-bond” relationships that override consent,
Extreme male possessiveness portrayed as genuine love,
Drugging and public humiliation portrayed as romantic tension,
Huge age and maturity gaps between partners,
Serial betrayal framed as female empowerment and playing hard-to-get,
Intentional miscommunication, with heroines refusing to talk through their problems—again, often framed as female empowerment,
Violence rebranded as safety, since the love interest will never really hurt the heroine,
Wish-fulfilment with serial partners, often framed as a justification for serial betrayal mentioned above, and
Lazy trope stacking (eg “rich-fey-boyfriend,” scent/marking, etc) without confronting the darker implications of coercive and non-consenting relationships.

Sadly, it seems that all of these toxic aspects of romantasy are reflections of the current state of modern dating and relationships. For example, in a world of online dating where ghosting and fading is all-too common, serial betrayal is a bit of a power fantasy, as is wish-fulfillment with serial partners, since if “true love” doesn’t work out, there’s always another one just a swipe away. Similarly, because women who have taken multiple sexual partners find it difficult to pair-bond with any of the later ones, the concept of “mate-bonding” may have arisen as a way to recapture that lost sense of bonding that comes with the “first time.”

Call me old fashioned or out of touch, but I preferred it when things were simpler, and the traditional boundaries around sex and relationships were still very much in force. There’s something charming about the love stories that were written before birth control and the sexual revolution, where men had to woo their women and get them to say “I do” before any of the bedroom gymnastics became a factor. Of course, I’m totally biased, because my wife and I both have a “body count” of exactly one.

I think romantic love is one of the greatest things in the world. I think that sex is also a wonderful and a beautiful thing, especially when it is used to fulfill its primary purpose: to facilitate lifelong pair-bonding between a man and a woman. In my experience, this is an even more important purpose of sex than procreation, though of course that is a very important (and very fulfilling) secondary purpose.

I don’t read or write romantasy, so you won’t find any of those tropes in my books. You will find a lot of romantic love, though, especially in my sea mage cycle books. Rescuer’s Reward is probably the closest thing I’ve written to a straight up romance, at least in the fantasy genre. The Widow’s Child also has a strong romantic subplot, though it goes a little further than fade-to-black. And of course, the Soulbond King books are going to have a lot of romance, since the magic system requires a man and a woman to become bonded in love in order to unlock their unique magical powers. Those books are going to be a lot of fun to write.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Motatseba, or how to bag a wife—literally (Blast from the Past: April 2012)

With the rise of #MeToo, I thought it would be interesting to revisit this old post from my time in the Republic of Georgia. Here in the US, we seem to be in the process of completely reworking the societal norms for how men and woman interact in the public sphere. On one extreme, we have serial predators getting ousted from power in industries that enabled their abuses for years. On the other extreme, we have the perpetually outraged calling for blood because someone greeted a woman in public with an unwanted hug. False and anonymous accusations abound, while clear and obvious abusers like the Clintons have gotten off scot-free. In short, it’s a mess.

Changes this drastic always produce unintended consequences. One of the unintended consequences of #MeToo may be the blurring of the lines of consent. After all, if a woman can call it rape because she decided afterward that she regretted it, is positive consent worth anything in the first place? In eastern Europe and central Asia, consent has also been blurred, which is part of the reason why bridenapping is still a thing. In Georgia, I came face to face with this reality.

Let me make it clear that I do not condone bridenapping in any form. Cultures are not equal, and some cultures (or some aspects of a culture) are better than others. A culture that condones the kidnapping and forced marriage of women is much worse than a culture that ennobles and empowers women to be agents of their own destiny.

With that in mind, here’s the updated post.

მოტაცება (pronounced motatseba) is the Georgian word for bride kidnapping, as opposed to regular kidnapping, which takes a different word. It’s an ancient practice in the Caucasus region that still occasionally happens, especially in the rural areas. Today, most Georgians condemn it, but there’s still a whole slew of lingering cultural subtexts that can be very difficult for a Westerner like me to understand and navigate.

This is how it works: boy meets girl. Boy decides to marry girl. Boy gets his friends together and kidnaps the girl, with or without her consent, holding her captive overnight. The next morning, boy contacts girl’s parents to ask for girl’s hand in marriage.

Since the girl has been held overnight, the implication is that she’s been raped (which may or may not be true). Therefore, to avoid a scandal which could tarnish the family’s reputation, the parents will usually marry their daughter off as quickly as possible. However, if the girl can escape, or the girl’s brothers can rescue her before nightfall, the crisis can be averted.

Basically, it’s capture the flag with sex.

I first heard about motatseba from this post on Georgia On My Mind, back when I was looking into teaching English. It disturbed me, but not enough to dissuade me from coming to Georgia. A couple of weeks ago, however, I learned that that was how my host parents got married.

Here’s the thing, though: they both seem to remember it fondly. In fact, when my host mom saw a comedy skit on the subject, she couldn’t stop laughing. Her mom lives with them now, and from time to time they go out to visit his family in the village, so it looks like everyone’s on pretty good terms.

So what the heck happened?

Here’s the story, as best as I can piece it together. They were introduced by his sister, who was her coworker at the hospital. He liked her, but was too poor to afford a dowry, having just gotten out of the Red Army. After a month, he got together with some friends and tricked her into coming out to his family’s house out in the village. She was surprised and upset at first, of course, but her parents gave their consent, probably because she was starting to get into old maid territory (she was 29 at the time). They were married the next day by a magistrate. Now, they’ve got four kids—a huge family, by Georgian standards—and seem to be happy together.

As a Westerner, it blows my mind that a strong, healthy family can come out of something as violent as an act of kidnapping. Indeed, I have yet to be convinced that that’s a normal outcome. However, after asking around and doing some research, I’ve come to realize that motatseba isn’t a black and white issue: there are all sorts of cultural subtexts that make it much more complicated.

The key to understanding how all this works is the following proverb, which underscores Georgian concepts of gender roles and the differences between men and women:

If a woman says no, she means maybe. If she says maybe, she means yes. If she says yes, she is not a woman.

From this, two things follow:

Men should be more assertive

As a man in Georgia, I get this all the time. All three of my co-teachers are women, and all of them constantly defer to me, even though they have far more teaching experience than I do. When I had some pretty serious differences over teaching methodologies with one of them, she suggested that I take over the next lesson and teach it without her interference, so that she could get a better idea that way. This isn’t the case with the female volunteers. Many of them complain about how hard it is to get anyone to take their suggestions seriously.

A woman can never say no—or yes

If “no” is constantly interpreted as “maybe,” then it follows that no one is going to believe that a woman is even capable of saying “no.” On the other hand, if a real woman can never say “yes,” then the man ultimately has to take matters into his own hands. This turns the whole concept of rape into a nebulous gray area, which is why motatseba isn’t universally considered to be a horrible thing.

This is not to say that in Georgian culture, women are doormats or property (even though that’s what some TLGers claim). Women have a number of support networks, such as family, friends, and other women, and can use these networks to ward off unwanted attention. When I asked my host sister if she’s worried that she would ever be kidnapped, she said no, because if she was, her brothers would kick some serious ass.

On top of all this, Georgians have no real concept of casual dating. If a girl and a guy are seeing each other, they’re either married or about to be married. This shows up in the way they use Facebook and other social networks: instead of listing themselves as “in a relationship,” the girl will give her password to the guy she’s dating. And they don’t just do it because the guy demands it—when my host sister was seeing someone, he asked her if she wanted to give her password to him, as if that was the natural next step in their relationship. From the way she told me, she seemed to be worried that she’d made a mistake by telling him no.

Combine all of these together, and you should start to get a clearer picture of some of the subtext surrounding motatseba.

When I asked my first co-teacher about it, she said it was only an ancient practice and absolutely didn’t happen anymore. When I brought up rape and asked if that was also a part of it, she was horrified and didn’t want to talk about it. However, when I asked if it’s possible for a happy marriage to come of it, she kind of smiled a little and said that if the woman likes it, then why not?

My second co-teacher was much more straightforward with me. Yes, it happens occasionally, though it was a lot more “fashionable” about twenty or thirty years ago. No, it’s not romantic. Yes, a lot of the marriages aren’t very happy, which is why so many of them end in divorce. She told me that one of her friends from college was married through motatseba, and that she knows of at least one case in our school where an 8th grader was kidnapped and married. However, motatseba is now considered a serious crime, so it’s not as common as it used to be.

My third co-teacher’s answer was a lot sketchier. The first time I asked about it was in passing, as she walked in on the conversation I was having with my first co-teacher. When I asked her about rape, she laughed and said “well yes, of course it happens!” as if that wasn’t a big deal. Later, however, she sat me down and said quite seriously that motatseba is a horrible thing, that it’s a criminal act, that it doesn’t happen anymore, etc etc.

However—and this was perhaps the most illuminating thing—she said that sometimes, when a guy and a girl are in love, but she’s being wishy-washy and non-committal, he’ll sweep her off her feet and carry her off. In fact, that was what happened with her: her boyfriend wanted to marry her, but she kept putting it off, so one day he tricked her into getting in the car and told her “all right, enough is enough—we’re getting married this weekend.” And they did.

When I asked her if that was motatseba, she said no, but the subtext was clearly similar. A real man knows how to assert himself and take what he wants. Since a real woman will never say yes, sometimes you just have to man up and tell her how it’s going to be. And don’t worry if she says no—she just doesn’t know yet that she wants it. She’ll come around eventually. They always do.

It sounds pretty horrible, but that seems to be how it works. And really, there are gradations of it. Most Georgians will agree that it’s wrong for a guy to kidnap a girl he doesn’t know so that he can rape her. But if the guy and the girl know each other, and are already pretty serious, and he wants to speed things up—or, alternately, if she knows her parents would never say yes otherwise—that’s when everyone starts to wink and nod.

And really, can we say that our culture’s problems are any less abhorrent? What about teenage pregnancy? Secret abortions? Date rape? At least with motatseba, the guy is trying to marry the girl, not just sleep with her and walk away. If it’s just sex that the guy is after, there are plenty of other options for that.

Either way, learning about motatseba firsthand has certainly been an interesting anthropological experience.

Trope Tuesday: Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Oh dear. I’m probably going to take some heat for this one, especially if it gets picked up by File 770.

What is a “manic pixie dream girl”? Tvtropes puts it this way:

An upbeat young woman whose love gives the brooding male hero a new lease on life.

Wikipedia puts it this way:

…the MPDG “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer–directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up; thus, their men never grow up.

You know how the term “space opera” was originally a derogatory term for crappy science fiction? I’m going to go out on a lark, invoke tropes are tools, and argue that Wikipedia is wrong and there’s nothing inherently bad about this trope.

Anita Sarkeesian is not a huge fan of the manic pixie dream girl. In fact, it was the first trope she deconstructed way back 2011, before her scammy kickstarter. I’m not a huge fan of Anita Sarkeesian, but it’s worth rewatching her take on it:

In particular:

The manic pixie perpetuates the myth of women as caregivers at our very core—that we can go fix these lonely, sad men, so that they can go fix the world.

Here’s the thing, though: when you study the men who have fixed the world, you almost always find a strong, caregiving woman behind them. This is portrayed very well in The Darkest Hour, with Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine:

Granted, Clementine Churchill is no manic pixie, but she did provide critical support to her husband, and was one of the key influences that shaped him into the great man of history that he ultimately proved to be.

Here’s the thing: men need women, just as women need men. All the feminist eye-rolling in the world doesn’t make that untrue. And for men who are lonely, depressed, or overly introspective, a perky outgoing woman can really have a positive impact.

The key to doing this trope well is to make the MPDG a complete character in her own right. Critics rightly point out that something is wrong when she exists solely for the benefit of the male protagonist. That’s not a feature of this trope, though: that’s just bad writing in general.

The best example of a MPDG in my own work is probably Deirdre from Heart of the Nebula. The rest of this post is going to be full of spoilers, so if it’s on your TBR list, you should probably skip to the end now.

Deirdre is very much a character in her own right. She’s the ship’s historian of the Chiran Spirit, a generation ship that James liberates from pirates before going into cryosleep. In spite of her perky, cheerful demeanor, she has experienced deep pain in her life. She immediately latches onto James, but over time this transforms from an interest in a living historical figure to genuine attraction and love.

James and Deirdre round off each others’ rough edges. She helps him to recover his optimism and self-respect, while he helps her to understand herself better and decide what she truly wants. They both help each other to reconcile with difficult baggage from each of their pasts, and though they both go through a period of disillusionment, they ultimately come out stronger for it on the other side.

Here’s the thing, though: if Deirdre was anything but a manic pixie dream girl, she wouldn’t have been able to help James through his darkest hour. It’s her bouncy enthusiasm, clumsy excitement, and unfailing optimism that draws him out of his callused shell. Without those characteristics, the story—and her character—wouldn’t have worked.

In short, I believe that the manic pixie dream girl trope very much has a place, and isn’t inherently sexist or mysoginistic at all. It can be, if done poorly, but when done well it points to the reality that men need women just as women need men, and that’s actually a good thing, no matter what the feminists say.

Trope Tuesday: Rebellious Princess

You know that innocent and beautiful fairy tale princess, with the tricked out dress and the power to summon woodland creatures? The one with a tendency to get kidnapped, but who always ends up happily ever after with her prince charming?

Yeah, that’s not this princess.

A rebellious princess would just as soon puke if she were any of those things. She hates being royalty–she’d rather be one of the common folk, or at least be out doing something (which is why she’s often involved in politics). She hates all those frilly dresses and tends to wear her hair in a tomboyish ponytail. Rather than wait for her white knight to save her, she’s much more likely to be an action girl in disguise, or at least something of a badass. When she grows up, she may become a lady of war. Invariably, she hates whatever marriage has been arranged for her and often scandalizes those of her class to marry for love (if she even marries at all).

As you might have already guessed, this trope is extremely common, not the least because the princess classic has largely been discredited (at least, outside of Disney). There’s a lot of variation on it too, with some stories featuring the rebellious princess as the love interest, and others showcasing her as the hero.

George R.R. Martin (Song of Ice and Fire) deconstructs the trope with Arya, who eventually becomes something of a sociopath, and Brandon Sanderson (Elantris) subverts it with Sarene, who very much has the personality but uses her royal position to her advantage. Frank Herbert (Dune) zigzags with Lady Jessica, who is undylingly loyal to the Atreides family but rebels against the Bene Gesserit. As you might expect, J.R.R. Tolkien plays it straight, not once but twice: Éowyn in Lord of the Rings, and Lúthien in The Silmarillion.

It transcends cultures, too. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Jen might not technically be royalty, but she is the governor’s daughter and she does reject an arranged marriage to run away and become a wandering warrior. And in classic RPGs, especially the old Japanese ones from Square, this trope is everywhere. The princess in the picture above is Marle from Chrono Trigger, who fits this trope to a T.

So why is this trope so prevalent nowadays? Probably because the modern feminist movement led us to discard most of our old-fashioned feminine ideals, as well as the characters who were held up as shining examples of them. That, and rule of drama. Everything ultimately comes down to rule of drama.

In my own work, Hikaru from Stars of Blood and Glory is an example of this trope, though she’s more of a president’s daughter than a hero or a love interest. She does have her own story arc, though, and I’ve got a sequel in the works with her as the main character. Scientists aren’t exactly royalty, but they do consider themselves elites in Genesis Earth, which means that Terra has echoes of this trope. And in Heart of the Nebula (as-yet unpublished), I’ve got a character who isn’t exactly rebellious, but she does qualify as a badass princess (though the society in question is a perfect techno-democracy and not a monarchy).

Trope Tuesday: The Three Faces of Eve

Why do so many character combinations come in groups of three? Unlike love triangles, where the combo is primarily a way to build conflict, the characters in power trios all build on each other in some way. They might be foils for each other, but as complementary archetypes, they do far more to drive the story together than they ever would apart.

One of the most interesting all-female power trios is the Three Faces of Eve, which combines the archetypes of child, seductress, and wife:

The “child” (who does not have to be a child literally) will be seen as innocent, perhaps to the point of naïveté. The wife, the wiser, calmer aspect, someone around whom one could build a home life. The third, the seductress, is sexually experienced and independent.

Roughly speaking, the characters in the trio correspond to:

The Ingenue: A naive, innocent, childlike girl who is just setting out into the world. In a Freudian Trio, this would be the Ego.
The Femme Fatale: A seductive, alluring, mysterious woman who is experienced in the ways of the world. Unlike the Vamp, she may or may not use her feminine wiles for evil. In a Freudian Trio, this would be the Id.
The Yamato Nadeshiko: A calm, steady, faithful wife, who provides the kind of marital stability and maternal strength that is ideal for settling down and raising a family. In a Freudian Trio, this would be the Superego.

You’d be surprised to see how often this trope shows up, even in works of science fiction. In Star Wars, Leia was the child in A New Hope, the wife/mother in Empire Strikes Back, and (what else?) the seductress in Return of the Jedi. Just about every Star Trek series featured some alignment of these archetypes.

Squaresoft played with this trope a lot in their Final Fantasy series, which may be illustrative to examine in greater depth. I’ve only played through FF IV, VI, VII, and Chrono Trigger, but each of these titles features some interesting variations (warning: spoilers!).

Final Fantasy IV: Porom (child), Rydia (seductress), Rosa (wife).

Porom is pretty solidly the child, though Rydia starts out as this and later grows up into the seductress role. She doesn’t get the guy in the end, though: that would be Rosa, who pretty much starts out with him as well.

In terms of story, the characters don’t really seem to build much on each other, though in terms of gameplay you definitely want to have Rydia and Rosa/Porom in your party (though not Rosa and Porom together–you only need one white mage, after all).

Final Fantasy VI: Relm (child) , Celes (seductress), Terra (wife).

This is my personal favorite in the series. Unlike IV and VII, which both center around male protagonists, Final Fantasy VI revolves around Terra (world of balance) and Celes (world of ruin) as the central protagonists. Because they also play a role in the power trio, their characters are quite complex, especially in the second half of the game. Relm is arguably more of a Mary Sue, but her relation to the other characters, especially Shadow, also makes her role more complex and interesting.

In the end, the romantic subplot is fulfilled by Celes, not Terra, which was something of a surprise to me in my first playthrough. It works really well, though, because of Celes’s heel face turn and subsequent reformation (in which Locke is arguably a Manic Pixie Dream Girl Spear Counterpart). Does that also translate into a shift from seductress to wife as well? I’m not sure, but I’d probably say no–after all, it’s Terra who takes on the mother role in the world of ruin.

Final Fantasy VII: Yuffie (child), Aeris (seductress), Tifa (wife).

The main twist with this one is that visually, you’d think Tifa is the seductress and Aeris is the wife. In terms of story archetypes, however, it’s just the opposite: Tifa is the one whom Cloud depends on, the one who helps him work through his problems, while Aeris is the shifty, mysterious one.

Unlike IV, where Rosa and Cecil are set up from the very beginning, for a while it actually looks like Aeris and Cloud are going to end up together. But then, in perhaps the most tragically gut-wrenching moment in all of video game history, Aeris dies (and doesn’t come back). Since Yuffie is kind of, well, crazy, Tifa and Cloud are pretty much garanteed to get together after that point (and as for Sephiroth…I don’t even want to go there).

Chrono Trigger: Marle (child), Ayla (seductress), Lucca (wife).

Chrono Trigger is interesting because the girl who ends up with the guy in the end (Chrono) is actually the one who fulfills the child archetype, Marle. It works, though, because of the childlike feel of the story. Unlike FF VI and IV, Chrono Trigger is not a dark or an edgy tale–it’s heartwarming innocence at its best. I always did feel that Lucca got the short end of the stick, though–but she did get a cameo in Xenogears, so perhaps the last laugh was hers after all.

Ah, Xenogears. <sigh>

Anyhow, long story short, the Three Faces of Eve power trio is a fascinating way to play with feminine archetypes. Recently, I’ve become quite interested in it because it showed up quite inadvertently in my current project, Heart of the Nebula. It’s funny how tropes can sneak up on you like that, especially some of the more archetypal ones.

Anyhow, in its current form the novel is a piece of trash, but now that I’ve recognized the potential to set up this particular power trio, I think I can really make it shine. If you have any insights, please share–I’m very interested in this trope right now!

What French Women Know About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind by Debra Olliver

I have a confession to make: when I was at my sister Kate’s for Christmas, I saw this book on her shelf and ~~stole~~ borrowed it without permission. I finished it just yesterday, and at the risk of embarrassing myself, I’m going to review it as my second book of this year.

This book presents a fascinating perspective on French lifestyle, attitudes, and culture. Even though it’s geared more for women than for men, I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoyed Twilight–as an interesting anthropological experience.

It goes beyond that, though. The picture Ollivier paints of French culture is fascinating in and of itself, if nothing else for the contrasts she points out between us (Americans) and them. According to Ollivier, the key difference is that the French have a deep understanding of “the brevity of time and the immediacy of pleasure.” Ollivier follows this philosophy out to its logical conclusions to show that everything in French culture is an outgrowth of this–and it makes sense.

For a non-fiction book, the writing itself is quite entertaining, with constant pop culture references and a playful, humorous style. It was a delight to read, and fairly easy as well.

However, I did get the feeling that it was a little too enthusiastic and non-critical to present a comprehensive or truly accurate picture of French culture. Between the lines, Ollivier seems to be saying that if we Anglos would just be a little bit more like our “French sisters,” most of our problems (like our obsession with marriage, our frustrations with perfection, and our general lack of passion) would be solved.

I take issue with this: as much as we have to learn from the French, their culture has a lot of issues as well. For example, I personally believe that Laïcité is fundamentally incompatible with a multicultural society, and leads to de facto state repression of legitimate religious expression in the public sphere (such as the wearing of the headscarf).

Also, whenever Ollivier described American culture, I always felt as if she was describing something completely alien to my own experience. There might be a good reason for this, considering how for the past six years I’ve lived in Utah Valley, a bastion of Mormon culture so unlike the rest of the American mainstream. However, it might also be that Ollivier exaggerates the worst excesses of this continent in order to more sharply contrast the subject matter of her book.

As a writer, though, I found this book inspiring–particularly as a writer of science fiction. In my novels, I’m constantly inventing new cultures to populate the many worlds in my science fictional multiverse. This book, with its clear and entertaining analysis of some very real-world cultural differences, gave me an excellent world-building prototype and a whole ~~plethora~~ (oh how I hate that word) bunch of new ideas for ways to enrich my stories. In fact, this book gave me just what I needed to get through the block that had kept me from writing Star Wanderers, so if nothing else, there’s that.

So yeah, if you’re interested in world cultures or world-building cultures of your own, it’s worth your time to check out this book. It’s perhaps not the most thorough or comprehensive book, but it is entertaining, and fairly insightful as well. I mean, hey, if a science fiction geek like me enjoyed it, it’s got to be doing something right.

Trope Tuesday: The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a way to measure how prominently women figure in a story. It mostly comes up in discussions of TV and film, but can also be applied to works of literature. To pass the test, the story must have

at least two named female characters
who talk to each other
about something other than men.

The surprising thing, as you can see in this discussion of the trope, is that so few stories actually pass this test. Even in literature, works like The Odyssey, Romeo & Juliet, and even War & Peace fail to pass or only barely pass this test.

Closely related to the Bechdel Test is the Smurfette Principle, where only one of the major characters is female–the token chick. Stories that fail to pass the first part of the test fall into this category.

So why does this happen? It may be because most writers are male, but that isn’t necessarily true of books and literature. Novel writing, after all, was originally considered a womanly pursuit, and the English major was created in the so that women could have something to study while they were in college. Not surprisingly, 19th century works by female writers like the Bronte sisters tend to pass…

…or do they? It’s been a while since I read Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, but the impression I got was that the women in those books spend only really talk with each other about men. And when you look to contemporary writers like Dickens and Tolstoy, the trend holds. After all, how many female characters are there in A Christmas Carol? Do any of them ever even talk to each other?

This isn’t necessarily a measure of how good or bad a story is, or even of how feminist it is (Aliens, after all, technically passes), but it is a measure of how independent and well rounded the female characters really are. If the story doesn’t pass, it’s a sign that the women only play a role in relation to the men, or that the male characters are the ones who advance the plot.

I don’t usually like to bring up my own stories in relation to these tropes, but I thought it would be useful to apply this test to my own books and see how they shape up. As a writer, I think it’s a good idea to do this periodically, to make sure my work isn’t slipping into a rut. So here we go:

Genesis Earth

Point 1: Yes, there are two named female characters: Terra and Stella.

Points 2 & 3: No, they never talk. However, when you apply the reverse Bechdel test (two men who talk to each other about something other than women), Genesis Earth only barely passes. Michael talks with Tom in the first chapter, mostly about Terra, and for the rest of the book he and Terra are alone.

Bringing Stella Home

Point 1: Yes, it passes. Named female characters include: Stella McCoy, Danica Nova, Anya Sikorsky, Tamu, Lady Borta, Lady Zeline, Sergeant Maria.

Point 2: Yes; in most of Stella’s scenes, she’s talking with Tamu or Borta or one of the other Hameji women. Also, since Danica is the captain of the Tajji Flame and Anya is the chief pilot, they interact quite a bit.

Point 3: Yes, but just barely. In most of their scenes together, Stella and Tamu are talking about Qasar or the harem or sex. There are a couple where they talk about each other and their past, but it all relates back to their captivity under the Hameji. At one point later in the book, Anya goes AWOL and Danica has to talk her down, which is probably the scene that makes the book pass, but a hardcore feminist might argue that that conversation is indirectly about a man. Still, I’m counting it.

Desert Stars

Point 1: Yes, there are plenty of women. In fact, as you can see from this list of non-minor characters, there are almost as many women as there are men:

Female	Male
Mira	Jalil
Shira	Sathi
Zayne	Hamza
Tiera	Rumiya
Lena	Gregor
Surayya	Kariym
Amina	Ashraf
Rina	Ibrahim
Sarah	Lars
Michelle	Nash
	Mark
	Will

Point 2: Yes, plenty of these women talk to each other. Surayya and Amina are practically joined at the hip, Tiera, Shira, and Lena all have private conversations with Mira, and the only time Rina even talks is when she and Mira are alone.

Point 3: While most of the conversations between the female characters revolve around men and marriage, Tiera talks with Mira about honor, and Rina talks with Mira about leaving home. Without spoiling too much, there are other conversations that have nothing to do with men, though they happen off-stage and only get reported second-hand. Either way, I’d say this book passes.

None of this is to say that a good story must pass the Bechdel test. Lawrence of Arabia, for example, doesn’t have a single female actress–not one single actress!–and it’s an amazing film. As a counterpoint, I’m sure there are plenty of good stories out there (most of them probably anime or manga) that do not pass the reverse Bechdel test.

However, it is a good measure of female presence and how much the story is driven by men. And as a lens through which to view the wider culture, it offers a surprising and somewhat disturbing perspective on male-domination in fiction.

Wow, this is fun

I spent almost the whole day Saturday with family, but when I finally got around to working on Sholpan, I breezed through almost 10k words in only a couple hours. Granted, it was mostly light revision and the material was fairly well polished to begin with, but still…it was just fun.

The best part of writing this novella has been rediscovering Stella’s story from Bringing Stella Home. At first, I was a little worried that it might be a bit too shocking (and for some of my friends, it probably is), but there’s a lot of depth to the story, and the content, while definitely mature, is never gratuitous.

The story is basically about an innocent, sexually inexperienced young woman who struggles to keep her virtue and self-respect intact within the harem of the brutal space barbarians who have enslaved her. While she starts from a position of almost total powerlessness, she finds ways to leverage herself without completely compromising her values.

I haven’t figure out the blurb yet, but that’s a pretty accurate description of the story. It’s basically all of the scenes in Bringing Stella Home from Stella’s viewpoint, up through the first and second acts of the book. In the third act, everything comes to a head, and…well, I won’t ruin it for you. 😉

I’ll probably finish Sholpan sometime later today. My copy editor for Bringing Stella Home should be sending back the manuscript with his edits tonight, and I’ll spend the rest of the week going through and getting it ready for publication. By Monday, it should be up!

In the meantime, check this out: I was playing with the cover art yesterday afternoon, and came up with a cover for Sholpan. What do you think?

The thumbnail:

…and the full sized image:

Man, this is so much fun!

How do you write a character who is shy?

The writing is a little sporadic these days, but it’s coming along. I’ve broken out of my most recent block, and progress is coming along on WAFH…or at least it was, when I didn’t have a temp job sucking up most of my time during the day.

Still, can’t complain about work–and even though all the job interviews from a couple weeks ago seem to have lead nowhere, I’ve got a few new opportunities opening up that seem promising. More on those later.

One of the more challenging aspects of WAFH is writing the main female protagonist, Mira Najmi. Mira is something of a shy pushover, who gradually learns to stand up for herself and make her own independent decisions.

Because of this, I find it difficult to write from her point of view. When she isn’t letting people walk all over her, she’s either homesick and depressed or following others without making any real decisions for herself. And yet, in order for her growth arc to work, this is the point at which she needs to start out; her gradual change into a strong and independent woman is a major part of the book.

In short, how do I make a shy, self-effacing protagonist sympathetic and interesting while remaining true to her character?

(Before I go further, I should note that Mira does have strengths. She has a caring, nurturing personality, and is sensitive to the needs of others. She often notices the little things that go right over the male protagonist’s head. Besides that, she’s basically a good person, with a pure heart and an aversion to causing hurt or injury. Oh, and she’s stunningly beautiful–though in some ways, that’s more of a handicap than a strength.)

Thus far, my strategy has been to delve into her internal monologue when in her viewpoint and try to make her underlying motivations clear. I suspect it goes beyond that, though. The best thing I can probably do is make her relatable to the audience–to make her shy in ways that make the readers feel like she’s one of them.

But that’s difficult for me, because I’m not a very shy person and I don’t generally relate well with people who are. So how can I get a better understanding of what it’s like? Do you guys have anything that you can share with me that would help me to understand? Any tips or techniques for writing similar characters?

(image taken from http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/lgrove/resign%20splashpage.htm)

Utah drivers are jerks

They really are. Yesterday while I was biking up to campus, a young woman (probably a college freshman) pulled out of a driveway to make a right turn and failed to look both ways before turning. As a result, she struck my bike, bending my rim and forcing me to replace it.

I got her name and phone number, spent about an hour (and $54) fixing the thing, and gave her a call. She didn’t answer any of my calls that day, but she called up the next morning to tell me that she’d talked with a policeman, that I was at fault, and that therefore she wasn’t going to pay me anything.

Of course I was frustrated at all of this, seeing as 1) I was a PEDESTRIAN on the SIDEWALK, and therefore not at fault, and 2) she had failed to look both ways before turning into traffic. What if I hadn’t braked? What if she’d hit me full on? I could have gotten seriously hurt due to her negligence!

So I told her “look, whether you pay me or not, will you promise me to look both ways before you enter traffic?” And her response–I kid you not–was “have you taken a defensive driving course? If you had, you would know that drivers making a right turn aren’t required to look right before entering traffic.”

WTF. Seriously?

Apart from the $54, which I figured she wasn’t going to pay for (jerk), this last comment profoundly bothered me. I only came out of this with a damaged bike–what if the next guy isn’t so lucky? So I sent her the following text:

As a driver, it is your responsibility to look both ways before turning. I don’t want you to injure the next guy.

To which she replied with the following:

As a cyclist, it is your responsibility to be on the correct side of the road and to give the right-of-way to who it belongs to. This mishap happened because of your own wrong doing- not mine. I’m choosing to look past the damage you’ve done to my car, which I could very easily require you to pay for (and it would cost much more than your rim that was “damaged” because you a)were on the wrong side of the road and b)failed to yield the right-of-way. That’s my way of being kind to a disrespectful person such as yourself (you hung up on me in mid-sentence). There is no reason to call or text message me anymore because the issue is over with. Any other text messages or calls I receive from will be considered harassment, and I will file charges against you.

A few things:

As a pedestrian, the right-of-way was mine–that was what the Provo police told me when I called them today;
While I shared some of the blame for riding on the wrong side of the road, she violated the law by failing to yield the right of way when crossing from private property onto a public street (again, taken from the officer I spoke with);
I seriously doubt her car received any more damage than a few scratches, whereas I have the bent rim to prove that the “damages” to my bike were very real;
I hung up on her mid-sentence because she kept pushing me to admit that I was at fault and that she was not in the wrong–instead of calling to apologize and work things out, she called to seek validation for shafting me.

What a jerk. She’s lucky I’m not taking this to her insurance company and trying to resolve it with them. While I’m sure that she fully deserves the rate hike and the stain on her record, I just don’t want to deal with the hassle.

The next time this happens, though (and I’m sure it will, because Utah drivers act as if pedestrians don’t exist), I’m going to call the police and resolve the issue with the law. I no longer trust Utahans to be honest and forthright in settling issues like this civilly. If you’re on the road and they can screw you, believe me, they will.