AGAIN?

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Dammit, there has got to be at least one speculative fiction novel out there that doesn’t introduce a female protagonist by RAPING HER.

It’s not so much that I disapprove of it happening in a story—stories are great because all sorts of totally awful things can happen to pretend people, instead of to real people, and I could write a whole dissertation on this. All I'm sayin' is, when it becomes the default way to introduce someone, I … get a little unsettled.

This book is pretty damn good anyway, and it does look like the incident serves some purpose of character and/or story development, but I'm starting to regard authors with suspicion when they open this way. Good grief.

Comments

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

...where the fuck do you get your fiction? o.0 I think you're looking in the wrong place.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I know, right? The trouble is that it's simply by genre--I just cruise the sci-fi and fantasy sections, and pick up books that look interesting. It's just that a disproportionate amount of them seem to feel that this is the best way to start a character arc.

Like I said, this one's actually pretty good (as versus the last book that had this happen), so I don't automatically brand FAIL onto books like this. But yeah, maybe the NEXT book will start off those arcs with a trip to the grocery store, or launching into space, or, you know, ANY OTHER SCENARIO.

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

I think the real "problem" is that you are attracted to and entertained by a certain "type" of story or character which has a high tendency to come packaged with the elements you DON'T like. That really usually happens because they are memeplexes, and/or holons, which are passed down among storytellers and all aspects of them get written because deviating from the memeplex or holon is a risk too big for most sci-fi authors to be willing or driven to take, because most authors do not make enough money from their books to be able to support themselves and their families on their writing alone... and because it is actually against our instinctive nature to do so.

It's weird how this works, but it's pretty common. I would be willing to guess that not one of those books of yours would be anything I'd be even willing to START reading. And that's why it's common -- because you read what you WANT to read, and what you WANT to read tends to come with baggage you DON'T want to read.

I don't know... if it bothers you that much, maybe try picking up a book yo DON'T immediately want to read? Ask for suggestions from other people and find some books with what you like and less of what you don't? I can't help you, sadly, but that might be a start...

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

... Not sure I understood all that.

Normally my book-choosing algorithm is pretty good; spec fic is a broad genre, what with the whole idea of "speculation." It's just that some authors have enough imagination to pull it off, and some don't. (Also, some authors are misogynistic douchebags.) You can't always tell from the book jacket, so you've got to open the book and find out for yourself. And for some reason, a lot of the lousy authors in any genre (and a few of the good ones) like to fling that trope around because it's GRITTY or TITILLATING without being part of the story. That's the frustrating part.

[beccastareyes]

Is this where I offer book recommendations?

[lookingforwater.livejournal.com]

Because there's a weird little brainbug going around that the only truly meaningful traumas a woman can experience are rape and/or loss of/inability to bear a child.

And okay, those are pretty big traumas. But something like, IDK, watching in helpless horror as your lover kills your father works pretty good too.

[gryphart.livejournal.com]

May I suggest a trip to the mystery section for a bit? I found it helped wash the taste of other flavors of bad writing away, and it comes with the added bonus of less ickyness in general.

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

Wouldja like recommendations? :D Speculative YA tends to not have that particular tropes, if you're looking for a break.

[nixve.livejournal.com]

Do you want some recommendations? Because I have shelves full of spec fic that don't involve rape.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I don't think I've ever actually run into this. The closest I can think of is Sword Dancer, but that's Del's second scene, and she just gets captured, she gets free before anything happens to her.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Are you choosing your books based on the cover? Because if you're grabbing a lot of titles that show, for example, skimpy women clinging to heroic males' legs, you shouldn't be surprised that they're not paragons of double standard aversion.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Well, what's the book already?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

John Sawyer's Hominids. Unfortunately, it didn't STAY damn good. It had a really promising premise--parallel world where Neanderthals evolved to be the sapient human species, which collides with our world and Hijinks Ensue.

I liked his worldbuilding an awful lot, and forgave his obvious wish to make the Neanderthal world a utopia (I can't argue--I have a shameless utopia world too), but the characters fell a little flat. The woman (from our world) who got to start out the book on such an upbeat note was a scientist with weird religious reservations pastede on yey, like a bad version of Mary Malone from His Dark Materials, and Sawyer didn't seem to think she could grapple with moral and societal issues unless they had affected her personally. So her story wound up kinda cobbled together.

I'm not sure if I'll bother reading the rest of the trilogy at this point. He should have published this book as one of those oversize popup ethnologues that seem to have suddenly gotten popular after Dragonology.