the fantasy of your sweet smile

[manifesta]

I think that the posts over at SF Novelists can be hit and miss sometimes, but I really enjoyed Marie Brennan's post today titled A Woman's Place is Not in the Refrigerator. In it she discusses how female characters are often killed off in order to propell the main male character's story forward and jumpstart their motivation.

"...it shows up in narrative media all over our culture. And, like many such tropes, the problem isn’t that it ever happens; the problem is that it’s a pattern. One which routinely treats women as the objects of violence, and as plot devices manipulated in the interest of a man’s progress."

I liked the post so much I checked out her website, where I found a backlog of some of her past posts, such as Tough Women, or Fascimiles Thereof, which outlines a lot of the problems I see in modern UF:

"...and instead of tough women we've always had an abundance of tough chicks, sexualized little things crammed into corsets, with guns to substitute for strength of character. I can think of exceptions to the rule, but they're just that: exceptions instead of the rule, and all too prone to getting undermined somewhere down the road."

as well as an essay on how she writes female characters. Between finding these gems and morning classes being cancelled due to high winds and power outages, it's been a lovely welcome back from my feminist weekend.

Brennan also has a ton of other essays that I haven't yet had a chance to peruse, but will as soon as I'm not drowning in psych work.* Being a fan of historical faerie fantasies, her book Midnight Never Come is now on my want list. Anyone read it?


*All the trials for my main experiment are (thankfully) done, which means I no longer have to get up at 6:30AM. The coding is also complete, leaving only the results analysis before I can write the paper. Alas, there are plenty of other things to do, such as prepping for two other experiments and reading a never-ending supply of psych articles.