thene: The Joy is facepalming at you. (facepalm)
thene ([personal profile] thene) wrote2011-04-20 01:04 pm

a quick word on no-win situations:

The absolutely amazing Tricia Sullivan made this offer on her LJ yesterday. Because she wanted people to ask, I ffffffffed my having-things discomforts and did so.

The one I asked for was a well-reviewed sf book that was particularly praised (by lesbians!) for its awesome lesbians. There are not many such things in the world. A few, but not many.

Reservations about the author were expressed to me privately; said reservations were about an incident I can't find record of but some googling did remind me that I had heard of Sanders before and it was when he referred to Arabs as 'sheet heads' in a private email and was shocked at the violation of his privacy when this got plastered all over the internet. Kids, remember the NYT rule. Do not say anything on the internet that you would mind seeing attributed to you on the front page of the New York Times.

My brain was hurting so I asked M what to do, on the grounds that he was the nearest Arab. See, if anyone else had been asking me I would have said 'lol no wai' (I remember telling Ting to pirate Elizabeth Moon's books), but where are all the lesbians? There is a scarcity argument on that side of the line; there is also a lack of investment in the judgement call because it's not my money going to the crazy Arab-hater and the person whose money it is (Sullivan, who I had just been tl;dr'ing at about how much better Richard Morgan's writing would be if he wasn't hung up on gender) said it was totally up to me; and she is only doing this to get money to the publisher; gah.

M shrugged and pointed out that a lot of people hate Arabs. More than we ever find out, I am sure. (The Prince Of Persia movie was a laugh for us because, Arab =/= Persian but M being a pale-haired blue-eyed Arab is just existential trolling at this point, except for every time he tries to get on an aeroplane.) He told me to go for it, so I did.

A thing will come in the mail, and I don't need it and will be glaring at it and will know that three entities have benefited from it being there; an Arab-hating squit, a small-press publisher in crushingly hard circumstances, and amazon.com. Amazon wins every time. :/

Erm. That one offer's closed but does anyone else feel like getting themselves a book or two? US and Canada only for all practical purposes.



Also, I slept too long last night and was woken up at 11am by Precious throwing up in my bed. Today is clearly awesome. :(

[identity profile] kat-nic.livejournal.com 2011-04-21 01:33 am (UTC)(link)
Conundrum. Especially since I have been longing for more queer women in spec fic. But I'm too broke right now for it to make any difference to me, anyway. :[

Precious puking on your bed reminds me of this post :I

[identity profile] kat-nic.livejournal.com 2011-04-21 02:27 am (UTC)(link)
I know. Reading about gay boys is fun but I want lesbians too, dammit. Or rather, lesbians in sci fi, fantasy etc. Is that so much to ask for??? And it seems like there are token lesbians in a lot of stuff (and I will forever rage/lol over the lesbians in Sword of Truth, honestly it's amazing I read far enough into the series to even discover it had lesbians in it) but they are never the main focus.

[identity profile] kat-nic.livejournal.com 2011-04-22 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
Why would queer characters ever get a happy ending? You pretty much have to go straight to small press that publishes LGBT stuff exclusively, and even that's frequently full of fail. (Why is rape or the threat of rape everywhere??? Yes, it's a real issue but I can't think of any books off the top of my head where no one gets raped, or it's just never brought up. And there are very few books where if you took the rape out, it actually made the story weaker.)

And why would token lesbians ever be anything but catering to straight men's fetishes; case in point, Sword of Truth's lesbians, who strut around in black or red skintight leather suits and whose weapon of choice is a foot long black leather dildo rod that causes extreme pain when you so much as touch anyone with it??? :|

[identity profile] kat-nic.livejournal.com 2011-04-21 02:37 am (UTC)(link)
Toby (the siamese looking one) is curled up next to me right now. They're really bonded and without each other, they are lost and bereft. :( When I moved I was only able to take Oz with me at first, and he wandered around the new apartment meowing really loudly and he didn't stop for two days until I was able to bring Tob-Tob. And their reunion was so sickeningly sweet; they were sniffing and grooming each other and purring.