Thoughts on graciousness.

That's sad. :(

I get that authors have bad days, and maybe, hopefully, it was just a bad day, but this is the sorta reason I am always scared to express great glee and joy at meeting one of my idols. One, I don't want to impose, but two, I have had authors I love and adore and respect let me down in some rather astonishing ways (the author who accused me on her blog about lying about my relationship and that I was just fooling myself that my trans partner was ever going to amount to anything but a "woman with a penis" was ESPECIALLY EPICALLY BAD), and... well, while I doubt anything would ever be as personal as that particular incident, I really... hate having that sorta thing happen.

There are some authors who just should not interact with fans. Really. And I wish more realized that and put their foot down and didn't do public appearances. I'm put in mind of a Certain Big Name Fantasy Author who told a group of fans that his books had Christian themes and if you weren't a Christian, you would not "understand" his work and shouldn't bother reading him. Yeah.

I'm sorry you had to deal with that. I hate that kind of disappointment, and it's hard to ever think of authors in the same light again after they've done things like that. :(

I'm put in mind of a Certain Big Name Fantasy Author who told a group of fans that his books had Christian themes and if you weren't a Christian, you would not "understand" his work and shouldn't bother reading him. Yeah.

Mr. Big Name Fantasy Author? Hi, I've got the ghost of C.S. Lewis here on line 2, who wants to pass on this message: "Christian themes. You're doing it wrong."

*SNORK*

Seriously.

Oh the heck yeah. :D

Would it be wrong to say, "Amen"?

(the author who accused me on her blog about lying about my relationship and that I was just fooling myself that my trans partner was ever going to amount to anything but a "woman with a penis" was ESPECIALLY EPICALLY BAD), and... well, while I doubt anything would ever be as personal as that particular incident, I really... hate having that sorta thing happen.

WHAT.

Ew. That's horrible. I have never been able to read anything by John C Wright after reading some of the things he has said about gay people, though I suspected him of being an asshole about halfway through his second book. :(

I'm put in mind of a Certain Big Name Fantasy Author who told a group of fans that his books had Christian themes and if you weren't a Christian, you would not "understand" his work and shouldn't bother reading him.

Wait, isn't one of the points of writing fantasy with religious themes to put your views out there so that people who don't already know all about them, but would agree with/believe them if they did, can see them in action?

I haven't been able to read certain authors after things they've said, either. I really liked Orson Scott Card's work until I found out some of the things he said about gay people -- and being queer myself, it's not really something I can let go. I'm on the same fence with Brandon Sanderson after he equated homosexual activity to somebody cheating on their wife (although he later clarified he was speaking in regards to fellow Mormons, BUT STILL).

You know, when I was Christian, that's basically the way I thought. I have a novella somewhere about a hardcore Christian falling for a Wiccan woman, because despite their differences, they still have much the same core values. And because of it, he learns and grows and becomes more Christ-like. (Book needs a lot of work and since I'm pagan now, I really haven't wanted to touch that since just because of the marketing side, but hey.)

Yes, I am also queer (and feminist, and have mental issues, and so forth and so on) and you know, just NO. NO NO NO. Though I get annoyed when people say things like that about Stephenie Meyer; she's never said a word either way, and I really did enjoy Twilight (de gustibus non disputandum, I know a lot of folks don't) so I don't think it's fair for people to assume she feels that way because Card wrote a blurb for her and they're in the same church.

I am not Christian at all, but I am Jewish with a Thelemic streak, and since I know I cannot keep my views on religion out of my writing about magic and religion, I have decided that it's better for everyone if I just don't try. I don't for instance think that I could write the kind of pagan fantasy world that's really popular in some markets right now (and was even more so 10-15 years ago) because I cannot really make that work inside my head. I used to be able to, before I found out that everything I had wanted in paganism was in Judaism, only I hadn't looked. But not any more.

But I would never say that you have to believe or practise anything that I believe or practise to read and understand my fiction. I mean that's just stupid. I admit that knowing more about where CS Lewis was coming from gave me more understanding of why Narnia and Perelandra were what they were (and oh did I not like some aspects of that, although I do like The Great Divorce quite a lot...)

I have really been extremely happy when people have told me they got something out of the ideas I put before them, whether or not they decided they wanted to go anywhere with it, though I think that actively proselytising to people is a boundary violation and I do not do it. I do not write with the idea of pushing ANY message (and am irritated when I'm accused of it) but I did think that's what self-proclaimed inspirational writers were trying to do.

I mean I guess it must be fun to preach to the choir, but I don't think I'd care to limit my audience that much since my audience is already kind of limited to people who can put up with my love of intricate plots and characters who are not necessarily easy to like at first.

I don't care for Meyer's work myself (I have too many friends who had boyfriends like Edward that turned violent for it to be a pleasant fantasy for me) but I have nothing against people who do. :)

I didn't actually know that she was in Card's church, though. That's interesting. I pay no attention to blurbs, lol.

I like seeing religious diversity in novels. It gets old seeing the same religious bases -- most popularly the all-good pagan religion vs. the evil obviously Abrahamic based religion. It's actually something that frustrated me a lot reading Mists of Avalon, which I know a lot of other people adored. I hated that all the pagan characters were the Good Guys and all the Christian characters were unrepentantly cruel, vicious, and downright evil in some cases. Sorry, it doesn't work like that.

Edward is actually really not much like an abusive boyfriend at all, though everyone says that; abusive boyfriends never ask you to stay in school, keep up ties with your friends and family (well, except for the ones that want to kill him, but that's understandable) or think really hard for a long time about whether or not you want to make any irrevocable commitments. They also don't tolerate being argued with loudly and fiercely or always give in in the end. But I like Bella better than either of her suitors.

Card and Meyer are both Mormons.

I have serious issues with Christianity, but if Christians themselves were all evil, the problems would have been dealt with long ago! The problem is that some of them are very good and some of them are very bad and they both use their religion to justify their actions. Except when they're blaming MY religion and MY holy books, which they claim to interpret "literally" (which G-d never intended anyway) to justify their actions. :)

I didn't necessarily say that he was abusive so much that I have seen the overprotective type turn violent when the person they were trying to protect didn't appreciate their protection. I'm thinking of the scenes where he tries to prevent her from leaving here. Again, it's largely a personal trigger. Your girlfriend getting stabbed by an ex will do that.

In-freaking-deed. That was my biggest complaint when I was a Christian. All the other people who tried to follow the letter of the law but entirely missed the spirit in which it was meant. And ignored key passages like, oh, "Judge not". *sigh*

My partner was devastated, actually. He had been corresponding regularly to her and when he felt that he could trust her enough to come out, she replied supportively. And then she sent that to me.

But this is the same person who later copy-pasted a reader's email and invited her blog readers to flame the reader for things she said in private correspondence, so...

...Prophets of all the Faiths of the worlds be with us.

*facepalm*

Good freaking grief. That's just vicious. :-/

If you don't mind naming that author - and obviously, if you do, that's perfectly fair - I will happily boycott them AND tell every single one of my network of trans friends and acquaintances* about it (and thanks to Twitter they number in the hundreds). I quit Mercedes Lackey cold turkey and spread the word when I read her really nasty transphobic story in the latest Diane Tregarde collection, and then found an essay she'd posted about writing books that was even worse.

The sad thing is, my first thought was "at least she acknowledged that the partner is a woman, albeit with a really dreadful stinger to it" and then I read farther down and she was misgendering a man. What the fuck. I am so sorry.

(*I am not trans myself, but my wife transitioned about two years ago [and is an author herself].)

... what the fuck? I must have missed that about Lackey. Do you have a link to the essay? I had remembered her having trans characters in the Valdemar books... that's really... wow. D:

(I will get in contact with you via PM. I have no issue with naming this author, but I'd rather not take up Seanan's post with it. :)

I'll find it again, since that essay seems vaguely apropos for this post about authors with feet of clay.

...

http://www.mercedeslackey.com/am_valdemar.html

It's partway down; someone asks if she'll ever have a transgendered character. The reply :

"While I never say "never," the likelihood of a transgendered lead characteris so slim as to be invisible.

Here is why. I support myself with my writing; I do not have the luxury ofwriting books for special-interest audiences. In my limited experience, somuch of a transgendered person's life and thought is tied up in their genderdifficulties, the ordinary reader would swiftly become bored with such acharacter; even Vanyel's whinging grates on some peoples' nerves. A wideraudience wants to see a character with problems that are solvable; in amodern or sf context, a transgendered person could solve the situation withsurgery, genetic modification, body-swap, or whatever. Those options arenot available to a fantasy author.

As for minor characters, well...I already have used transgendered persons.Didn't you notice?"


(the Tregarde story also features a trans woman who is played for a joke, depicted as homicidally insane because of her gender dysphoria, and consistently misgendered. It's “Arcanum 101” in the _Trio of Sorcery_ collection if you want to observe the fail up close, though I don't recommend it.)


Thanks!

Bloody hell.

I remember the Lackey story now. I had mostly forgotten it. (Ever since I was on a certain med, I've had memory problems and often don't remember a lot about things I've read after a few months.) That was pretty fucking disgusting, and I had thought a lot better of Lackey before that. :-\

As far as the essay, I think I vaguely remember reading that back in the early 00s, maybe late 90s. Also I know a lot of her content was originally published in zines prior to the website, so I don't actually know when that particular comment originates. I kept hearing from authors then how difficult it was to publish books with queer heroes, much less trans. The marketing and audience part, at the time, I think was unfortunately true. There is a LOT more awareness of trans and trans issues now than there was even ten years ago.

The second half of that is dead wrong, though. Why the hell is it not available to a fantasy author? HELLO, MAGIC. Plus the fact that not every trans person necessarily wants surgery, either. >_<

(Would you mind if I friended you? From the list of filters you offer on your future post, we have a fair bit in common. :) also, I think it's required to be able to reply to your DM? Although I promise not to be at all upset if not.)

I do think the essay was older, actually; I've seen it circulating as a purported rebuttal to objections about the Tregarde story, and I very much doubt that. But based on the story I feel reasonably confident concluding that a) she now thinks it's possible to use a trans main character [albeit villain] because she *did* and b) her underlying attitudes haven't changed a whit, given the portrayal thereof. Also, it bugs me and my wife both that she automatically assumes "trans" = "special interest." After all, she wrote gay characters who were well-rounded, interesting people with plenty of other interests/personality traits besides not being straight...

Vanyel's annoying whinging is just poor writing. Someone who's offended by the mere presence of an LGBTQ character is a damn bigot.

Ditto and ditto! He wasn't problematic because he was gay - but because, as she says without taking responsibility, he whined incessantly.

Ugh. No. Just really, No, and I'd love to know who that was because I would not read them. Finding out an author is transphobic or homophobic is really a deal breaker, for me, because I have limited time and resources and I prefer to spend those on people I can feel good about supporting. And ugly attitudes have a way of influencing the storytelling in unplesant ways that I do not need in my head.

My love is trans, as well, and I sometimes get so fed up with the world I could stab things.