Quick link and quick thoughts.

[megwrites]

arcaedia who is a real live literary agent asks what sorts of books you, as a reader, would love to see or are very tired of seeing and never want to read again

What impresses me most is how many people are getting sick and tired of the leather-clad tramp stamped heroine in Urban Fantasy, and to tell you the truth, so am I. I'm also really impressed with how many other people are tired of the whole "kickass" deal. I'm tired of the attempts to be sassy and snarky at the expensive of being believable.

I left my comment yesterday over here about the fact that I'm really fed up with the way that Urban Fantasy has been going lately.

Four pages of comments (so far), and you can definitely feel a frustration with the state of Urban Fantasy. Although I'm sad that there isn't more of a cry for more diversity in books. I'd like to see that as many fans are fed up with the whitewashing of the genre as many fans of color must be.



I'm not even tired of vampires and werewolves, I'm just tired of badly written ones. I'd love for a really thoughtful writer to go in depth and explore what being one those creatures would be like. What would be really great, what would be a drag?

I've often wondered if a creature with super sensitive smelling can stand to go in places like Bath & Body Works, because wouldn't that overload your nose or something? I know that sometimes I get a migraine going into that place. Wouldn't super senses work against you if you were, say, going to the mall or riding the subway or even just at the office, especially if you were new to the game?

This may sound weird, but I've often wondered if becoming a newly made vampire a) who's ability to handle sensory detail has been messed with and b) who perhaps doesn't have the same psychological make up and empathy they did before would make a newly made vampire not sexy, but rather akin to someone with autism.

Not to imply that people with autism are like vampires or anything. Certainly not. And definitely not to imply that people with autism are bad or evil, but there can be no denying that in a world made for neurotypical people, autistic folks can come across strange to those of us who don't understand what they are experiencing.

The reason I even came up with this is because I was re-reading The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, and the narrator (a young autistic boy) likes to go strolling around at night, not because he's particularly sexy or a creature of the night or anything, but because when it's night he says he can pretend he is the only person in the world. Which is actually quite touching, because the entire book really shows how bewildering neurotypical people can be for him.

Although, just a note? Do try to read some non-fictional sources on autism, and give yourself a bit of an education (as much as one can), because though the book is awesome literature, it has it's flaws and bits where it doesn't precisely ring true, because I do think that some of the realism of having a protagonist with autism (or perhaps Asperger's. I don't have nearly the knowledge to even begin diagnosing a fictional character) was sacrificed to make a cohesive story that was appealing to a neurotypical mainstream.

The point is this: I'd love it if someone brought that kind of narrative lens to bear on an urban fantasy novel. I know urban fantasy has borrowed a lot from the fantasy, horror, and romance genres, but I don't think it would hurt for it to borrow a cup of sugar from the mainstream literary genre, either. Especially when it comes to allowing both the plot and story to exist in a naked light.

I think the urban fantasy obsession with shadows and darkness has extended to the narrative abilities of authors who, rather than fleshing out characters and plots, throw a bunch of shading over it and hope people won't be able to pierce the darkness.

But from the four pages of comments I've read, our night vision as readers is quite stunning, and all we're seeing is crap.

Also? I would really love it if we just put a goddamn moratorium on the cover designs that publishers have been coming out with lately. The backsides of women with skimpy clothes and tramp stamps, or even just the whole "let's do a close up of one part of her body" thing where there's just a hand or foot or leg shown is really bugging me.

I think it's because it taps into a deep vein of objectification that I, and all other women, have suffered under for a long time. Women have been reduced to being just bodies or just body parts for centuries. And the literature that is supposedly by us, for us isn't helping with our on going quest to not only get men to recognize and treat us as equal human beings, but to get ourselves to realize it and act accordingly.

Comments

[fashionista-35.livejournal.com]

It's a while off, but my friend Alyssa Day is going to have an Urban Fantasy that stars a demon hunter/exorcist heroine. And she does NOT wear leather or have tattoos or behave in a kick ass manner. She's, as Alyssa puts it, "A nice midwestern girl who has a really unusual job."

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Please, let me know what the title is and when it's coming out so that way I can find her book and hug it and squeeze it and call it George.

Because it'd be just a bowl of cherries if I could find a really wonderful urban fantasy.

[laughingfalcon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for stating that you aren't tired of vampires and werewolves, just ones that are carbon copies of what's already out there. I feel that way too.

And although the progression is slow female characters are getting better. Women in older fantasy/sci-fi novels like the Conrad Starguard series were little more than animals and bedwarmers. Likewise, women were usually eye-candy on the old star-trek. But they did have real jobs which was a start.

Then there were the tv shows in the 80's that had women in roles like FBI agents who were always needing to be saved because they couldn't break out of a single attacker's hold. Unbelievable but women were depicted as having higher positions.

Then we have gone to the "tough chick" a warrior woman who is tough but she can't be feminine at all if she is to be accepted into the man's world. So we have all the female cops and Captain Janeway on Star Trek Voyager.

Now the pendulum allows them to be "tough and sexy" but not soft. Maybe the door is opening far enough that a woman can be something other than a ditzy shopaholic or a guy with a chest or a leather clad stalker of the night.

Let's see! Best of luck, let's see what will be coming out!