Fugitivus Discussion Forum

That reminds me of the fact that I just reread Frank Herbert's Dune for the first time in a decade or so. It's a more compelling story now that I'm more than ten years old, but it's also drenched in painful amounts of gender essentialism. Painful amounts of everything-else essentialism, too, come to think. Old Frank sure did love him some predestination.

Oh, wow, I just finished the Hunger Games trilogy. Wow wow wow wow wow. I have not been as excited about something I read in a really long time.

Has anyone else read them? Oh, so wonderful. Female author, female heroine, fairly feminist writing. Good social commentary. Great post apocalyptic action and story line, beautiful writing. Dare I say there is even some good deconstructions of gender?

There is a movie coming out. I hate to say it, but I am already disappointed. I saw a preview, and it looks like they are focusing on one of the male main characters instead of the female lead, who is the obvious main character in the book. It is written in first person from her point of view, first of all, and is very much her story. I am trying not to be too pessimistic, but I am afraid she's going to be demoted to a love interest. Argh!!

That makes me really, really angry, that they would focus on a secondary character instead of the female main character.

*PAUNCH OBJECTS.*

I actually just downloaded an e-book of the Hunger games, but haven't read it yet. While still an enraging possibility, maybe they're just slanting the preview to focus more on the male character so more people will come in to watch it, but will actually focus on her in the film itself? That would still be full of suck, but I've seen previews do that sort of not-showing-the-protagonist-much thing before (forbidden kingdom, for one).

Isabel, I was trying to convince myself that may be the case. I sure hope so. I highly recommend reading it.

I'm on the last book in the Old Kingdom series (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen)
Lirael was just an amazing book, and I loved the main character to death and I want a magic library now @_@. And the puppy was great
Saving (most of, well maybe half >_>) the last book to read on the airplane.

I've been a Garth Nix fan since first reading Sabriel years and years ago now, and found myself more impressed when I came across this.

I've just read the Ender Quartet for the first time, and I have to say that the amazing-ness of the writing managed to distract me from Orson Scott Card's rampant homophobic bigotry. I can't say the quartet knocks The Left Hand Of Darkness off the top of my favourites list, but Ender's Game in particular is some pretty incredible writing.

So I've been re-reading lots and lots of random Stephen King novels, and noticed a couple of weird recurring tropes in several of his books that are kind of bugging me, the more so because I really like his books otherwise.

1) The magic black guy (and occasional magic black woman) : in several of his books (The Shining, The Talisman, The Stand (If I recall correctly), arguably in IT, possibly others I'm not recalling) there is a magic and/or psychic black guy who talks to the (usually pre-adolescent, white and male) protagonist and offers important advice, guidance and aid in a marked dialect from a lower-class position. This figure offers a caretaking role for the main character, and is usually the only non-white figure in the book. In The Stand, I think this figure was a psychic elderly black woman who gathered a bunch of survivors together, offered maternal wisdom, and died, and in IT, Mike Hanlon kind of touched on this role (though obviously did not fully embody it) as the only one of the seven who remembered the events in Derry as an adult and had to gently hand-lead the others to full recollection but could never take on a leadership role.

1a) Although the villains in these works are usually either literally inhuman or possessed of forces that are, and are murderous beings of evil incarnate who kill dozens, if not hundreds, depending on the work in question, just in case we the readers missed how evil they really were, at some point in the book, they tend to start dropping the n-bomb wildly in wrathful rants. If this had happened in only one or two novels, I don't think I would have remarked on it, but it's something that keeps recurring. It seems sort of like it's going beyond "something evil will say anything to disturb/upset you" to "only INHUMAN EVIL (or something touched by it) would be that consistently racist."

2) Menatally/developmentally disabled people are angels/ virtuous beyond human norms/ magically uplifting to all who get to know them. I seem to remember something along these lines in one of the Bachman books (either The Regulators or Desperation), but it's really apparent in Dreamcatcher, where Douglas/Duddits is so bright and angelic and ennobling by dint of his "perpetually childlike" ways (due to Downs Syndrome) that not only does he make his friends better people, he gives them psychic powers. Also, see the perpetually childlike thing - even at age 38 Douglas is not an adult - he's still seen as a child by his mother and his friends, and is the only important human character who's point of view is not directly given - instead we get his mom's if his friends aren't around (at least so far - I haven't finished my re-read yet and it is remotely possible that he'll be treated as a person rather that an uplifting hallmark moment at some point). Even the form of cancer he has in the story is one usually associated with children in our cultural narratives - leukemia.

Am I getting too cranky in my re-reads, or are these things you folks have noticed too? I admit it's been awhile since I re-read The Stand or the Bachman Books, but I have some lengthy flights coming up, so they're on my list for the future.

Currently reading Birthed from Scorched Hearts: Women Respond to War edited by Marijo Moore. Most of the submissions so far are amazing (like a black feminist reimagining of Medusa, a Native American perspective on 9/11 called "This Land Had Seen War Before", a memoir of one women being visited in her dreams by the mother of Lyncoya*). A couple of less impressive submissions and things I have problems with, but still I think a really important anthology. It has a US focus and a focus on Native American women.

*Lyncoya was a Cherokee baby who Andrew Jackson adopted after killing his parents and his people. He died of tuberculosis as a teenager.

I'm reading a thesisisisisisisisisis about women and scrapbooking. It started off great, then it degenerated into talking about how "scrapbooking provides a cosmos for women to make family."

wut.