(no subject)

I had a dream where I was a ghost and went to visit Benton Fraser when he was still alive cause in the dream he was my dad and he died before I'd thought up the good questions and I had to learn him from books until he started being mysterious ghost guy which apparently runs in the family. So, anyways, ghost-me, alive-Benton. And it was a very sad dream, because it was all about dead babies and a sense of guilty failure. Very sad. It would make a very poignant story, I think, because there would have to be deciding that a short life doing your duty was in fact worth it, but there would be all that stuff that didn't happen, and it would be sad.

So I pretty much woke up crying. :-(




Before that there was a dream with Turlough, being very teenage and an absolute tart. It involved huddling for warmth while everyone was stuck trying to find sufficient floor space to sleep in while they were all homeless in a big warehouse place. Then 5 turned up with the rest of team TARDIS. Everyone was dating in / pairs, and they all wandered off together very happy. That dream was merely irritating and not very sad. So, better.

women in fantasy books... again

I'm up to book 3 of the Belgariad and some things are kind of nagging at me. And mostly they're about treatment of women. The race thing remains a bit ugly - surely you need to know more than a man's race to know what kind of person they are! Plus Murgo = evil = angular eyes = I feel vaguely ill every time they say that. But the treatment of women is bugging me.
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I know I'm only on the third book out of, eventually, ten. I vaguely recall stuff changing as it goes along. But this stuff I've already noticed isn't making me feel very eager to keep going along. You know?


It is making me want to rewrite it with some of the characters genderswitched and some queer and some refocused.

The central character right now is a teenage boy who is learning to grow up in a world where boys protect girls and girls serve boys and girls kiss boys and aspire to marry boys and... he's just not asking the right questions. Sure, he gets all social conscience about serfs in Arendia - they're the guys in the same social position he grew up in, the ones doing the chores; he identifies so of course he wants them treated better. But he doesn't speak up about how women are treated, and that is starting to make me just... not interested. I don't *care* if he learns to use his power, if he's only going to use it to make things keep on being the same.



I don't think I've read these since I was in school. Which is a long time. Things keep managing to actually surprise me. Not big things, but here and there.


Things I actually like about the book: Silk. He's snarky, sly, sneaky, and a professional spy. Also short. And an acrobat and martial artist. And he seems perfectly willing to notice that women are just as good at all those things as he is... though I could be reading in a bit far to get to that. He just seems to respect his Queen going in to the spy business and agree with her that shuffling the women off to a seperate council is ridiculous, and there's a woman in Tolnedra he respects professionaly... though her profession is also the oldest one, so that's another in the stereotype-women column. Annoyance.
But Silk is just exactly my fic type. He's kind of like Methos and Spike and suchlike. Including the thing where he enjoys his work just a little too much.
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Sometimes I feel like I'm getting whiney, learning to read books in ways that make them no fun. Like it's me, you know? But then I look at the list of stuff the story is doing, and... no, I think it's quite reasonable to not like that stuff.

I read F&SF to get away from reality. Go places where absolutely anything could happen. Why does so much of it import the icky anyways?

It's the little moments that screw with the premise

So: The Belgariad is, for the first three books, about chasing around the world after a magic stone. The stone was supposed to be impossible to steal, because only the pure of heart can touch it. So after a few thousand years someone comes up with the idea of getting a little kid to pick it up. Innocence, purity, close enough.

But then:

Durnik smiled at him, bent over and held the mouth of the pouch open. "Put it in here, Errand," he instructed, "and we'll tie it up all nice and safe so you won't lose it."

The little boy delightedly deposited the Orb in the leather pouch. "Errand," he declared firmly.

"I suppose so," Durnik agreed. He pulled the drawstring tight and then tied the pouch to the bit of rope the boy wore as a belt. "There we are, Errand. All safe and secure now."

... is anyone else seeing the flaw there?
Either Durnik is pure of heart - which is actually believable, but nobody suggests it.
Or - the only thing you need to do to steal the stone is not actually let your skin touch it.

If he could carry it around in a pouch, so could the bad guys. So why did they need the little kid?

... Because he's important to the plot later, is why.

(no subject)

another thing bothering me about this book - there's a whole bunch of slaves, in slave pens, underneath a city. In an earthquake. The good guys are escaping past the slave pens, close enough to hear them panic. But the don't do anything. They don't even mention it! The only slave they care about is the woman who is part of the prophecy. The one where all we've learned so far is she's naked with big breasts, and she had children but they were killed.


She gets to be powerful. She can scare a man and make men feel stuff. By getting naked.

much *facepalm*

oh, eeew

'Castle of Wizardry'
pov just switched back to Ce'Nedra. All she thinks about that we see is The Boy and clothes. She also receives religious instruction that is all about doing what you're told.
ick.
They've got a little boy with them, and he sits on her lap and she cuddles him and is overwhelmed with 'aw, cute!' And, okay, fair enough, that happens. But why does it only happen to the girl?
so then we get back to the central issue for her - she doesn't want to go to Riva, to be put on display in humiliation, or to the arranged marriage.
She says so.
The cute little boy looks at her and touches her lips and when she looks at the cute little boy she can't think straight and her feelings change and after a couple of minutes her driving compulsion is just... hugged away.
I think it's supposed to be funny.
It's *disgusting*. It's making me shudder. It's outright mind control, it's Jasmine and her happy inducement, it's rearranging the emotions of another sentient free willed being.
It's *grotesque*.
And I think it's meant to be funny.
The worst part is they're doing it instead of allowing her to make a free and informed decision. If they'd told her who she'd be meeting there, she could decide to go. But they won't tell her, because then the big plot surprise wouldn't be a surprise, even though it's not a surprise to any reader paying attention anyway. So instead she gets all twisted in the emotions by this little kid who all of a sudden is not so cute because cute mind control is not cute.

The whole section reads like what a man thinks would be going through a woman's mind. She says she hates Garion and then she ignores him, and *clearly* this is because she's in love. It's making me nauseous.

In my experience people mostly do things because they seem like the thing to do at the time. They're mostly too wrapped up in their own thing to be particularly concentrating on other people's reactions. I realise there are exceptions. So Ce'Nedra is a popularity contest sort, all about getting a reaction from other people. Fine. But in what world is that how to go about it? The good Boy-to-love-her reaction she's after, I mean. She's either really bad at it or people in this book do not work the way people I have observed work.

Stupid.



Also, someone asked for a love spell without it being pointed out that would be rape. It was said to be impossible, but the morally-wrong part was left out. I think that part is rather important.


I think in stories it is important to be clear that when people say no they mean no and when they say bugger off they mean bugger off and when they say I hate you they mean I hate you and they all get choices and if they choose to not get married they are in fact allowed. And by 'people' I pretty much mean 'women', because men don't seem to have the same problems... Hang on, Relg is saying bugger off, but apparently meaning come here. Okay, so that's a problem for both genders. It's really messed up either way.

I know people are complicated and change their mind, but this idea that bugger off secretly means try harder just messes things up. Seriously.

(no subject)

I went to the supermarket and ate the meat free breakfast and bought some ribena in a bottle
and then I bought juice and bread and eggs like I went out to buy
and then I came home

win!
:-)


now I go sleep I think

tired