Wherein fictional texts are Not My Shiny
Apr. 6th, 2009 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI started reading a new book by a new author this evening, and I sort of ground to a halt and started, erm, thinking other stuff mostly involving Owen Harper, which isn't particularly relevant.
So I sat down to think why this book wasn't pulling me in.
It sounded like my kind of thing from the cover. Cyberpunk meets urban fantasy, alternate universe where there's elves and faery and magic and all that but humans level the playing field with advanced cybertech. The central character, a woman, started in politics, went on to being a spy, then got all upgraded after injuries. Now she's assigned to bodyguard an elf and things get political again.
So far, so good.
But I think I'm about half way through now, and the list of things that are bothering me came readily to mind. Starting with, I think it fails the Bechdel test. It's possible her pshrink is a woman but their longest conversation was about the man who injured her badly enough to need cyber parts. She's bodyguarding a singer in a rock band, which doesn't sound very political but there's a whole music-as-magic thread emerging so whatever. There's other women in the band, but she's mostly talked to one of the back up singers, about the lead singer guy. And then there's the lead singer guy's sister, who turns up to say, basically, magic says that bodyguard woman must have sex with lead singer guy, only whoever asks for it first won't ever love anyone else.
So I'm not impressed with the personal relations stuff.
Professional conversations mostly happen with men. Probably. Though I might have missed some genders in the minor characters.
So there's a woman surrounded by either Men Who Do Work, or Women Who Talk Sex.
*sigh*
It's not as utterly flat and boring as the summary sounds or I wouldn't have got half way before I had to notice.
The other threads of what annoys me are about the cybertech. It wasn't a voluntary upgrade, she didn't choose it, and now she has Body Issues. She hates her body, she hates the way she looks, she doesn't feel like she's in control of it. She's already made explicit the comparison with women who do exercise and plastic surgery, saying they hate their body too. I'm *hoping* that the end game of the book is to get her to actually like her body, but I have a horrible sinking feeling about how. It seems to involve pretty men and sex fairly centrally.
And she's reacting like she's adjusting to a disability - with lots about the pain and possibility of permanent damage and her concentrating on her scars - but she has nifty superpowers. This always rubs me the wrong way. Disabled people do not, generally speaking, get nifty superpowers to go with it. Of if they do I want to know where I can apply.
And lastly there's something bugging me about how she's going on about her mixed nature. I think it crystalised around calling elves that don't like her new body racists. It's like she's become mixed race and she's all sad and upset about it. Possibly guy she's bodyguarding has similar mixing issues. And it's bothering me, because... I don't know precisely how to say. Nagging feeling of poor engagement with stereotype?
So. I like the bits with magic, the action sequences with the cybertech, the way that magic and cybertech get compared and contrasted. I could possibly like the different magical races, except for I just realised that's going to bug me because they're depicted as having essential differences rather than differences based on choice. But any opportunity for complicated politics based on opposing ideologies sounds like fun to me, so I might be able to skip it. But calling it racism to judge based on the idea of built in differences while constantly highlighting built in differences... better be going somewhere and notice it needs fixing. It might notice. Has about some things already.
... although noticing in the not-hating way is tangled up with noticing in a pretty-sexual way, which is kind of off too.
So I've got a pretty clear idea of what isn't working for me.
The more I read other people's stuff lately the more I want to write something, because I can't seem to find what I'm after. Differences based on choice, equality and strong women relating to each other about something other than men, and the kind of power differential that lets me play with metaphoric representations of disability but still doesn't erase actual disabled people or their contributions. Team stories!
Why do I keep finding books with one central protagonist? In comics you get single character books *and* team books. Do novels just not do that? I've seen more innovation in fanfic, with sequential point of view shifts that give you something from each of the team. I seem to keep on picking up books where One Special Snowflake has to battle a world where everybody else is too dumb to live. Er, okay, overstating it slightly, story can focus entirely through central character and still be fun. Miles Vorkosigan is all about the quality of his team. But... there's so many layers of but I'm just really frustrated.
Where's the partners stories even? Not the unequal partnership or the will they won't they romance, the equal partners getting the job done?
I think I'm going to go read the Diane Duane wizardry books through again in the near future, because they might be about teenagers or talking cats, but they actually fit my criteria. People working together, differences cause they've studied different things, towering forces opposed by sticking together.
I'm so grumbly.
I'll go sleep.
So I sat down to think why this book wasn't pulling me in.
It sounded like my kind of thing from the cover. Cyberpunk meets urban fantasy, alternate universe where there's elves and faery and magic and all that but humans level the playing field with advanced cybertech. The central character, a woman, started in politics, went on to being a spy, then got all upgraded after injuries. Now she's assigned to bodyguard an elf and things get political again.
So far, so good.
But I think I'm about half way through now, and the list of things that are bothering me came readily to mind. Starting with, I think it fails the Bechdel test. It's possible her pshrink is a woman but their longest conversation was about the man who injured her badly enough to need cyber parts. She's bodyguarding a singer in a rock band, which doesn't sound very political but there's a whole music-as-magic thread emerging so whatever. There's other women in the band, but she's mostly talked to one of the back up singers, about the lead singer guy. And then there's the lead singer guy's sister, who turns up to say, basically, magic says that bodyguard woman must have sex with lead singer guy, only whoever asks for it first won't ever love anyone else.
So I'm not impressed with the personal relations stuff.
Professional conversations mostly happen with men. Probably. Though I might have missed some genders in the minor characters.
So there's a woman surrounded by either Men Who Do Work, or Women Who Talk Sex.
*sigh*
It's not as utterly flat and boring as the summary sounds or I wouldn't have got half way before I had to notice.
The other threads of what annoys me are about the cybertech. It wasn't a voluntary upgrade, she didn't choose it, and now she has Body Issues. She hates her body, she hates the way she looks, she doesn't feel like she's in control of it. She's already made explicit the comparison with women who do exercise and plastic surgery, saying they hate their body too. I'm *hoping* that the end game of the book is to get her to actually like her body, but I have a horrible sinking feeling about how. It seems to involve pretty men and sex fairly centrally.
And she's reacting like she's adjusting to a disability - with lots about the pain and possibility of permanent damage and her concentrating on her scars - but she has nifty superpowers. This always rubs me the wrong way. Disabled people do not, generally speaking, get nifty superpowers to go with it. Of if they do I want to know where I can apply.
And lastly there's something bugging me about how she's going on about her mixed nature. I think it crystalised around calling elves that don't like her new body racists. It's like she's become mixed race and she's all sad and upset about it. Possibly guy she's bodyguarding has similar mixing issues. And it's bothering me, because... I don't know precisely how to say. Nagging feeling of poor engagement with stereotype?
So. I like the bits with magic, the action sequences with the cybertech, the way that magic and cybertech get compared and contrasted. I could possibly like the different magical races, except for I just realised that's going to bug me because they're depicted as having essential differences rather than differences based on choice. But any opportunity for complicated politics based on opposing ideologies sounds like fun to me, so I might be able to skip it. But calling it racism to judge based on the idea of built in differences while constantly highlighting built in differences... better be going somewhere and notice it needs fixing. It might notice. Has about some things already.
... although noticing in the not-hating way is tangled up with noticing in a pretty-sexual way, which is kind of off too.
So I've got a pretty clear idea of what isn't working for me.
The more I read other people's stuff lately the more I want to write something, because I can't seem to find what I'm after. Differences based on choice, equality and strong women relating to each other about something other than men, and the kind of power differential that lets me play with metaphoric representations of disability but still doesn't erase actual disabled people or their contributions. Team stories!
Why do I keep finding books with one central protagonist? In comics you get single character books *and* team books. Do novels just not do that? I've seen more innovation in fanfic, with sequential point of view shifts that give you something from each of the team. I seem to keep on picking up books where One Special Snowflake has to battle a world where everybody else is too dumb to live. Er, okay, overstating it slightly, story can focus entirely through central character and still be fun. Miles Vorkosigan is all about the quality of his team. But... there's so many layers of but I'm just really frustrated.
Where's the partners stories even? Not the unequal partnership or the will they won't they romance, the equal partners getting the job done?
I think I'm going to go read the Diane Duane wizardry books through again in the near future, because they might be about teenagers or talking cats, but they actually fit my criteria. People working together, differences cause they've studied different things, towering forces opposed by sticking together.
I'm so grumbly.
I'll go sleep.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-06 06:24 am (UTC)Partly tradition - writers copy other writers - but mostly because they are more fun to write that way. There isn't space in a novel to get inside the head of more than one or two characters to the degree that most writers really enjoy. One of the big pulls of writing is really getting to know and understand a protagonist. Head hopping is going to feel superficial by comparison.
I don't follow why you find that problematical. What word would you prefer she use instead of racism?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-06 10:30 am (UTC)the problem with calling it racism is in the specifics. There's races who have the inherent nature of wanting to drown people dead. There's races who have the inherent nature of wanting to get their hooks into other people's souls. Deciding to not like those races is then based on their actions - they do bad things. Calling that racism is not reflecting the use of the word in the real world, where people are disliked for existing in a different skin but having the same range of options as everyone else.
But to explain it I've flattened things out some. It highlights the idea that everyone of species x or a particular race within a species will be doing these things, but it complicates it by showing them having jobs and doing lots of other stuff. So if it comes to the conclusion that actually not-everyone does it so disliking the whole race on that account is unfair, racism is a reasonable enough word.