Pixel Scroll 12/27 So Long, and Thanks for All the Fifths

(1) ORPHAN BLACK TEASER. BBC America says Orphan Black Season 4 has started production and will be shooting in Toronto through March.

Tatiana Maslany returns to her Emmy®-nominated role as multiple clones in 10 new episodes in Spring 2016.

Season 4 of the drama will see leader-of-the-pack, Sarah, reluctantly return home from her Icelandic hideout to track down an elusive and mysterious ally tied to the clone who started it all — Beth Childs.  Sarah will follow Beth’s footsteps into a dangerous relationship with a potent new enemy, heading in a horrifying new direction. Under constant pressure to protect the sisterhood and keep everyone safe, Sarah’s old habits begin to resurface. As the close-knit sisters are pulled in disparate directions, Sarah finds herself estranged from the loving relationships that changed her for the better.

 

(2) UNDERSTANDING CONTRACTS. Fynbospress provides a wide-ranging introduction to contracts for creators in “When do you need a contract?” at Mad Genius Club, a post that does much more than merely answer the title question.

This isn’t just for court; this is when you’ve submitted a rough draft to a copyeditor and found out they only did the first third of the book and the last chapter , or when you paid a cover artist $500 and they returned one proof of concept, then stopped answering emails. This is for when the small press gives you a horrid cover, no release press, and you have some real doubts about your royalty statements. This is for when you’ve agreed to turn in a sequel, and you find out your spouse has cancer, and nothing’s going to get done that’s not medically related. It’s for when you get the avian flu and aren’t going to make your slot with your editor, and aren’t sure you could make a pushback date, either, or the house washes away in a flood and you weren’t even thinking about when your cover artist finished her painting and wants paid.

(3) NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS. Lela E. Buis in “Safe spaces and personal self defense” conflates safe spaces with the convention antiharassment policies of which she disapproves.

Reading through the proposed convention policies, safe spaces apparently mean that no one can annoy you. When some evil lowlife approaches and says something that disturbs or upsets you, then you should be able to just say “no, go away” and they are required to do so. It means that you can cruise through the convention experience without worrying about anything. If anyone fails to do what you ask, then all you have to do is complain to management and they’ll take care of the lowlife who’s bothering you, pitching him/her out on the street. This is really an ideal situation, where nobody ever has to hear things they don’t want to hear, or deal with situations they don’t want to be in.

However, when you always depend on management to protect you, then you’re not taking personal responsibility for your own well-being. You end up with no self-defense skills….

(4) CHROMIUM SÍ IN AMERICA. “Here’s How Captain Phasma Got Her Silver Armor” explains Andrew Liptak in an intro to a video at io9.

Gwendoline Christie has certainly made her mark in the Star Wars universe as the silver-armored Captain Phasma. This short video shows where that armor came from, and it’s hilarious.

(5) NO SPOILERS. Joe Vasicek’s spoiler-free first impressions of the new Star Wars movie at One Thousand and One Parsecs.

Was it campy? Yep. Was it rife with scientific inaccuracies? Oh heck, yes! Were parts of it over the top? Yeah, probably. But these were all true of the original Star Wars, too. The stuff that really mattered was all there: good writing, solid plot, believable characters, awesome music, and that grand sense of wonder that drew us all into Science Fiction in the first place.

(6) SPOILERY AND FUNNY. Emma Barrie’s “The Confused Notes of a Star Wars Newbie Who Felt Compelled to See The Force Awakens” is a high comedy journal of watching The Force Awakens.  Paragraph two only spoils the original Star Wars trilogy, so that’s safe to quote….

Even as a member of the uninitiated minority, I did know some basic stuff about Star Wars, because how could I not? My birthday is May 4, so there’s that. I knew Darth Vader is bad and has the voice of Mufasa. I knew Han Solo is a person (though I thought it was Hans Solo). I could definitely pick Chewbacca out of a lineup. Princess Leia is Carrie Fisher (whom I primarily associate with hating that wagon-wheel table in When Harry Met Sally). She has those Cinnabon hair swirls and at some point wore a gold bikini (info gleaned from Friends). Lightsabers are kind of like fancy swords. Darth Vader is Luke’s dad.

(7) SPOILERY AND SERIOUS. David Brin was greatly relieved to find things to complain about in “J.J. Abrams Awakens the Force” at Contrary Brin.

Okay we saw it.  Star Wars: The Force Awakens (SW:TFA), on Christmas Eve.  And although I am lead author — and “prosecuting attorney” — of the book Star Wars on Trial, and hence a leading critic of the series, I must admit that:

(1) The newest installment of the franchise — directed by J.J. Abrams under Disney management — has none of the deeply objectionable traits of Episodes I, II, III and VI that I denounced in that controversial tome. Abrams and Disney shrugged off the lunacies George Lucas compulsively preached in those vividly colorful-yet-wretched flicks….

(8) SPOILERY TROLLING. Nick Mamatas is like one of those basketball players who in the parlance can create his own shot. If there was nothing in The Force Awakens to complain about, Nick would not be inconvenienced in the slightest. His review is at Nihilistic Kid.

Like any Star Wars film, it makes little sense. I’m not even talking about the inexplicable political economy of the galaxy that has both intelligent robots and people hanging out in tents with dirt floors, or the horrifying reactionary theme of an entire galaxy being held a prisoner of fate by about a dozen closely related individuals.

Is that last part so unrealistic, Nick? Think of Queen Victoria’s family ties.

(9) A FAN OF PEACE. I thought Hank Green was a science fiction fan (among other things) yet he exhibits a practically unfannish lack of interest in quarrelling with his fellow fans about Important Genre Definitions.

(10) FIVE IS ALIVE. At The Book Smugglers, “Jared Shurin’s Five Terrific 2015 Titles That’ll Tie Awards in Knots”  actually contains seven titles. Did he think nobody would count? Or was he worried File 770 wouldn’t link to his post without a “fifth” reference? Never fear, Jared, your praise for “A Small, Angry Planet” deserves to be shared.

Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

It lurked (and won The Kitschies) as a self-published work at the start of 2015, but as far as the ‘stablishment is concerned, this utterly glorious, brilliantly progressive and undeniably joyous space opera didn’t exist until the UK release in February and the US release soon after. It has been on multiple ‘Best Of’ lists (Waterstones, Guardian, Barnes & Noble), and hopefully that translates to even more well-deserved recognition. The awards scene is dominated by a) Americans and b) traditional publishing, so this book’s… er… long way… to market should hopefully pay off with further acclaim.

(11) SMACKIN’ WITH THE PUPPIES. George R.R. Martin finally froze comments on “Puppies at Christmas” after two days spent duking it out with trolls. Martin’s last entry in the discussion might also be taken as a reply to the coverage here the other day:

When people behave badly (in fandom or out of it), or do things that I find immoral or unethical, I reserve the right to speak out about it, as I did about Sad Puppies 3 last year.

When, on the other hand, I see behavior I regard as positive, I am also going to speak out about that… regardless of whether my words are going to be “spun” to suit someone else’s narrative. So far, what I am seeing on the Sad Puppies 4 boards is a step in the right direction… a spirited literary discussion that includes everyone from Wright and Williamson to Leckie and Jemisin. That’s good.

If it turns into something else later, well, I’ll revise my opinion or raise objections. But I am not going to deal in hypotheticals. Right now what I see is people talking books.

(12) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 27, 1904Peter Pan by James Barrie opens in London.
  • December 27, 1947 — The first “Howdy Doody” show, under the title “Puppet Playhouse,” was telecast on NBC.
  • December 27, 1968 — The Apollo 8 astronauts — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders — returned to Earth after orbiting the moon 10 times.

(13) RESTATE OF THE ART. “How Weinstein Co. Distribution Chief Erik Lomis Rescued 70MM Cinema For Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’” at Deadline Hollywood.

Lomis had an 18-month lead before Hateful Eight would hit the screen, and he promptly began scouring eBay and interfacing with film warehouses and antique collectors across the country “pulling the equipment, checking it and Frankenstein-ing it together. Configuring the lens took six months alone. They needed to be adjusted to today’s stadium auditoriums, which from the booth to the screen have a shorter throw versus the lens on the older machines which had a longer throw due to the sloping floor auditoriums,” explains Lomis. For the first six months, Lomis was picking up 70MM projectors at affordable prices, but once word slipped out that it was for a Tarantino film, collectors tripled and quadrupled their asks.  Essentially, to make three solid working projectors, one needed to pull parts from as many as five projectors.  Gears, shafts, bearings and rollers were the typical replacements. At times, these parts were manufactured from scratch off original blueprints. On average, Schneider Optics made a lens a day during production to restore this antiquated technology.

(14) SIR TERRY. Rhianna Pratchett  in The Guardian“Sir Terry Pratchett remembered by his daughter, Rhianna Pratchett”.

…The reaper came for my father much earlier in his life in the form of Death from his world-famous and much-loved Discworld novels. Death was a towering, cloaked and scythe-wielding skeleton who had a penchant for curries, a love of cats and TALKED LIKE THIS. We got a number of tear-inducing letters from fans who were nearing the end of their lives and took great comfort in imagining that the death that came for them would be riding a white horse called Binky. Dad had done something with more success than anyone else – he made Death friendly.

For me, as for many of his fans, it was his gift for characterisations like this that made his books pure narrative gold. Dad was a great observer of people. And when he ran out of actual people, he was a great imaginer of them. Both his grannies come through in his witch characters, while there’s a fair chunk of me in Tiffany Aching and Susan Sto Helit, Death’s adoptive granddaughter. …

(15) THE JAVA AWAKENS. “Designers Create Star Wars-Themed Coffee Concept” at Comicbook.com.

Graphic designer Spencer Davis and product designer Scott Schenone have come up with “Dark Brew Coffee House,” a concept that imagines what a Star Wars-themed coffee shop would look like.

(Lots more thematic imagery displayed at Dark Brew Coffee House.)

Dark Side coffee

(16) DARK OUTSIDE. Then could we change this to the Darthburger?

[Thanks to DLS,and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Shao Ping.]

242 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/27 So Long, and Thanks for All the Fifths

  1. In my hobby of tabletop roleplaying games I would say at least 90% of all the little pewter and/or resin female gaming figures are both “ass kickers” and “sex objects”.

    It’s not a mutually incompatible dichotomy.

  2. I can’t give Correia too much crap for author insert, prone as I am to writing grumpy, practical female protagonists who wind up gardening or digging or otherwise engaged in moving dirt around. But I also tend not to have them do anything I find desperately egregious (and if they do, they learn better or are suitably punished by the narrative for it.)

  3. @RedWombat:

    I don’t recall your author inserts making goo-goo eyes at attractive sexually available specimens of the preferred gender, nor being on the receiving end of such.

  4. @Vasha, thanks!

    I’ve been happy with my Novel reading thus far, and am probably satisfied to stop where I am (with the caveat that if another 2015 work comes through with significant reliable recc’s, I’ll try to slot them in for reading). I’m similarly done with my BDP & Best Graphic Story longlists.

    It’s just all of my short story categories are incredibly limited, to the point that all it takes is for me to have read something and not actively hate it for it to wind up on the longlist. So I appreciate stuff like your reviews, the recc’s here and in @Greg’s RSR, and even the (somewhat problematic) Nebula suggested reading list

    As to other categories….editor/ fancast/ non-kerfuffle related Works… will probably be no shows for me.

    Though. Does anyone know who edited The Shepherd’s Crown? The afterword made it sound like a team though, and I don’t know if that can be nominated.

  5. Well, no. But maybe that’s just more author insert, since I don’t usually do that myself.

    It’s author inserts all the way down!

  6. Camestros: yep, creepy.

    Vfn’f cneragf unir qrsvavgr vqrnf bs gur jnl guvatf bhtug gb or, va gurve fhoheona jbeyq, naq jungrire pbasbezf jvgu gubfr vqrnf vf borqvrag. Gurl unir erznexnoyr cbjref bs znvagnvavat gubfr vqrnf va gur snpr bs rirelguvat. Vfn’f gubhtugf nera’g borqvrag (naq fur gevrf gb haqrefgnaq vafgrnq bs vzcbfvat jung fubhyq or), naq jung vs gerrf nera’g borqvrag rvgure, qlvat ol yrnivat jngre gb bgure perngherf jub fhccbfrqyl qrfreir vg zber? Fheiviny, nagvgurgvpny gb borqvrapr, sbe n tvey naq gerrf.

  7. The flaming bagpipes are new to me. I haven’t seen anything like that the few times I’ve seen him around town.

    Pretty sure I have, but (a) only outdoors, and (b) only places where other people couldn’t wander close.

  8. Had a great book reading weekend.

    Fortunes of the Imperium- Jody Lynn Nye. The attempt at Jeeves like humor did not work for me, I think the author would have been better off playing it straight, otherwise I liked the story.

    Cibola Burn- James A Corey. I love the way this series manages to show the complexity of politics you would have in a realistic future without getting confusing. The characters are well drawn, there is lots of nail biting tension.

    Golden Son- Pierce Brown. Was pleasantly surprised by this one, the book description made it sound like a shallow story but it wasn’t. It’s enthralling, plenty of action, great protaganist, the world building is plausible. I like that the fight isn’t against an evil overlord, but an evil system that hurts everyone even the privileged.

  9. @Jim Henley @Peace: In fact, once I tried to play a female character who wasn’t a sex object – complete with description of her as “average looking” – and it didn’t work out.
    Yeah if I were playing your character I’d be uncomfortable and/or angry

    @All 15% into MHI. I’m pretty sure my feelings about the author are coloring my reading but it’s not bad for what it is. I’ve laughed a few times. I’ve groaned other times. The anti-government isn’t too obvious yet. The gun porn glazes my eyes but then so does David Weber’s descriptions of weapons in space or on Safehold. Women are cardboard cutout kickass sex objects so far. I think I could get most of the characters from gaming character sheets which isn’t a bad starting point…

    Have you all read Jim C. Hines Rise of the Spider Goddess: an Annotated Novel? If not I recommend it as a chaser. I think it will be perfect. It’s the first novel he ever wrote (not published) in 1995 based on an RPG game he played & annotated with his comments as an experienced writer in 2014. The book is bad, bad, bad but his comments make it well worth the read and kept me laughing throughout. I also used kindle notes to “have a conversation” with the author on his “notes”. It was a lot of fun. I can’t put my finger on why MHI made me think of this…

  10. @tasha. Yup. Jim even sent me a review copy. I think his comments about how bad it was became repetitive after a while, but seeing what he thought of his younger self’s work was illuminating, and funny.

  11. Speaking of creepy, has anyone read “A Residence for Friendless Ladies” in the March/April F&SF? The “residence” is a shelter of last resort for women who cannot find a place outside because they’re not acceptable. And the narrator winds up there too even though he has to put on a hated feminine facade to be admitted — everything outside seems to promise even worse violence. The desperation inside and outside the house are horrifyingly depicted. The house has a secret though — vg qbrfa’g whfg yrg gur erwrpgrq sybgfnz bs srzvavavgl yvir gurer, vg cebzvfrf gurz gung vs gurl yjg vg fjnyybj gurz hc vg jvyy erznxr gurz nf fbzreuvat gung jvyy yrg gurz or unccl. Gurer’f ab xabjvat vs guvf cebzvfr vf gb or oryvrirq be n tbbq vqrn, ohg ol gur gvzr gur aneengbe qrpvqrf gb npprcg vg lbh pna grnyyl frr jul ur guvaxf ur zhfg.

  12. I was going to recommend this to Tasha, but she’s already well along, but I have found Camestros’ suggestion to read the book as parody has made me enjoy it much more.

  13. Vasha on December 28, 2015 at 5:11 pm said:

    Camestros: yep, creepy.

    Vfn’f cneragf unir qrsvavgr vqrnf bs gur jnl guvatf bhtug gb or, va gurve fhoheona jbeyq, naq jungrire pbasbezf jvgu gubfr vqrnf vf borqvrag. Gurl unir erznexnoyr cbjref bs znvagnvavat gubfr vqrnf va gur snpr bs rirelguvat. Vfn’f gubhtugf nera’g borqvrag (naq fur gevrf gb haqrefgnaq vafgrnq bs vzcbfvat jung fubhyq or), naq jung vs gerrf nera’g borqvrag rvgure, qlvat ol yrnivat jngre gb bgure perngherf jub fhccbfrqyl qrfreir vg zber? Fheiviny, nagvgurgvpny gb borqvrapr, sbe n tvey naq gerrf.

    Yes, I liked that aspect of how people’s thinking played out.

  14. @Paul Weimer review copy cool

    @Shao Ping I’ve been keeping that advice in mind while reading. I’m up to 36%. May not finish tonight as I have a 7:30 ultrasound in the morning. I’m hoping to get some sleep and don’t think this is a must keep reading. It is keeping my mind just busy enough not to worry much about the pain & ultrasound which might mean gallbladder surgery soon.

  15. @Lenore Rose: Have you looked at the Starfire ongoing series? I think you’d find it a great improvement over her previous portrayals in the New 52.

  16. David: I should, but I am miles behind on comics reading. I only just read some of Gail Simone’s run on Wonder Woman (My first major foray into that character since the Perez run, in fact.) and a couple of other graphic novels of the last 5 years, and I mostly just felt lost. I’d urgently need a guide and a map (and either more spare cash than i anticipate having for a while or a more consistent library purchaser) to even know which parts of the canon are worth following these days.

  17. Shao Ping, it was indeed you I was responding to, apologies to Snowcrash for the misidentification.

    Now, you said: “If she’s not a sex object, there are no sex objects.”

    The character Owen Pitt is smitten with her. Its a description of his reaction. If she’s a mere sex object, ALL women are sex objects, all the time, in all books.

    I notice you left out the part where the first meeting between Julie and Owen was that she was there to kill him if her turned into a werewolf. How sex-objecty was that part?

    How does one describe a woman in a book? Are we no longer allowed to speak of the beauty and power of women? Are men no longer allowed to be attracted to women? Shall women no longer use their beauty and feminine power to their own advantage?

    How about the attributes of men? Is a muscular and powerful man not allowed to be a character, lest he be reduced to a mere sex object?

    So you say.

    Women have sexual attributes, some have more than others. In other news, water is wet and flows down hill. We describe such things in books because it creates the character. In some those things are exaggerated to forward a story. In other characters it might be that the -lack- of sexual attributes will forward the story. Example, Dorcas the mean old one legged secretary with the horse pistol.

    I submit you were desperate to find something provocative, and finding nothing of substance decided to settle for this. It’s weak. Try again.

  18. Phantom, I would say that you see nothing wrong with the way women are portrayed in the MHI books, because that is how you perceive women.

    Trying to explain to you how other men might see women differently — or, more importantly, how women might see themselves differently — or how authors can actually create characters by their character, rather than by their appearance — is clearly an exercise in futility.

  19. @The Phantom: “The character Owen Pitt is smitten with her. Its a description of his reaction. If she’s a mere sex object, ALL women are sex objects, all the time, in all books.”

    First – foul on your attempt to insert “mere” despite its explicit and repeated denial. Take a 20-yard penalty.

    Second – ALL women in all books, really? Even 106-year-old Mother Abigail in The Stand?

  20. The Phantom on December 28, 2015 at 10:51 pm said:

    I notice you left out the part where the first meeting between Julie and Owen was that she was there to kill him if her turned into a werewolf. How sex-objecty was that part?

    Let’s see shall we! So Chapter 3 Julie drops round to recruit Owen and then Owen asks her to stay for dinner and she explains she is in a relationship but has to stay around etc. Later she explains she stuck around to check he didn’t turn into a werewolf…

    She had been prepared to kill me all along.
    We silently watched the sky. I realized that she was still holding my arm, standing close, and I could feel the warm, soft pressure of her body against mine. There together, in the light of the moon, just the slight tenseness of her hands on the muscles of my arm, I could feel her breath on my ear. It was a good moment.

    …oh not sexy at all…

  21. @Phantom

    Shao Ping, it was indeed you I was responding to, apologies to Snowcrash for the misidentification.

    No worries. It’s little ironic in a post where you’re accusing someone of misreading something, but it happens.

    I agree with @JJ that given your aggressive lack of understanding, explaining various things to you – i.e., the difference between a sexual fantasy (as women are typically portrayed), and a power fantasy (as men are typically portrayed), the shallowness of the Strong Female Character trope – is likely a waste of time. Regardless:

    1. Now, you said: “If she’s not a sex object, there are no sex objects.”

    The character Owen Pitt is smitten with her. Its a description of his reaction. If she’s a mere sex object, ALL women are sex objects, all the time, in all books.

    Yellow card. You’ve gone from a description of “X is a sex object” to “X is merely a sex object”.

    2. Shall women no longer use their beauty and feminine power to their own advantage?

    ::twitch::

  22. @Vasha

    Binti was a tale of two halves for me – I liked the background and opening and was interested in how it was going to develop, but the 2nd half plot took a somewhat different direction that I wasn’t as interested in.

  23. rea on December 28, 2015 at 12:46 am said:
    Surely a Star Wars-themed coffee house has to be named the Java Hutt . . .

    The Simpsons did that joke in the episode where Krusty became an alternative comedian: Java the Hutt

    Lenora Rose on December 28, 2015 at 12:41 pm said:
    I haven’t read Monster Hunter International and probably never will, but anyone who thinks a character cannot simultaneously kick ass and be a sex object has somehow missed the controversy over how female comic book heroines are drawn (with mid-battle poses more reminiscent of porn than actual fighting stances, and with cleavage that virtually never resembles breasts so much as balloons). I’ve always loved Starfire the character, for instance, who flies by solar power and can fire bolts from her hands, who loves openly and fearlessly — but she’s always been drawn in a costume made of two strands of metallic stuff and usually in a sexy pose (George Perez at least seemed to have an idea how anatomy works and never broke anyone’s spine or vanished their internal organs), and her most recent iteration scrapped her personality in favour of more (but more loveless) sex.

    Webcomic artist David Willis did a fantastic takedown of the ealy portrayal of New52 Starfire:

    http://www.shortpacked.com/2011/comic/book-13/04-remedial-adulthood/math/

  24. How does one describe a woman in a book? Are we no longer allowed to speak of the beauty and power of women? Are men no longer allowed to be attracted to women? Shall women no longer use their beauty and feminine power to their own advantage?

    Are we sounding a lot like a Northwest Smith villain?

  25. Phantom wrote:

    The character Owen Pitt is smitten with her. Its a description of his reaction. If she’s a mere sex object, ALL women are sex objects, all the time, in all books.

    Phantom, have you noticed that you are assuming that 1) the point of view is always a man’s, and more a straight man’s? Seriously, a straight woman, a gay man, anyone who is not interested in sex (a child, an alien, an asexual adult) is not going to be sexually smitten with a woman. Moreover statistically there are *more* humans who won’t see a woman with a side order of sexual desire than humans who will.

    So when did “a side order of sexual desire” become the default for all women in books?

    This is what people mean by “the male gaze” by the way.

    Also you’re assuming 2) that all women worth considering will be sexually desirable. As someone upthread noted, the 100 year old nun is a member of all women, but your complaint that ALL women are sex objects ignores this.

  26. How does one describe a woman in a book? Are we no longer allowed to speak of the beauty and power of women? Are men no longer allowed to be attracted to women? Shall women no longer use their beauty and feminine power to their own advantage?

    Phantom, with all due respect, this is ridiculous.

    How about describing a woman the same way one describes a man–by one’s traits, rather than one’s appearance? A woman, just as a man, can be kind, shy, hard-headed, stubborn, loyal, outgoing, introspective, thoughtful, cheerful, bubbly, etc etc etc etc. This isn’t to say a character’s appearance can’t be stated–what color skin/eyes/hair/etc, body style (tall/short/skinny/hefty etc), but to dwell on it, as Correia seems to, in these excerpts? (In fact, the excerpts here are not inciting me to read any more of his books, to put it mildly.)

    Sorry, that’s not describing a female character. That’s describing a female sexpot, and I for one (and I suspect many other people) don’t like it.

    Shall women no longer use their beauty and feminine power to their own advantage?

    See, you’re betraying yourself right there. To my mind, that is outdated, sexist thinking. I don’t want my female characters to do that, because that means they live in a society where they can get power no other way. I want my female characters, and the books I read, to have societies where they can get power because they’re people, with all the flaws inherent to being people, and they’re treated as such.

  27. There is a slight subtlety here.

    In this worldview all women are either sex objects — or anti-sex objects.

    Sex object is the linear axis of judgement which all women characters must fall on.

    Thus the “mean old one-legged woman with the horse pistol” mentioned above as if she were a counterexample is specifially an anti-sex object, judged by the same light as the winking and snuggling kittens.

    It is not an entirely inaccurate view, but it is certainly incomplete. It ignores utterly the vastness of female human experience.

    For a better, deeper, more realistic view of women characters from a male author’s perspective, I strongly recommend the works of Terry Pratchett.

  28. I think it was trying to read a Robert Ludlum book when I was a teenager that I was brought slam bang against this wall. This woman was so beautiful that when she walked into a restaurant all the other women looked at her in jealousy. Like, other women simply could not deal with how beautiful this beautiful woman was. I think that was the point where I started skimming descriptions of women that focused on how incredibly, unprecedentedly, launch-a-thousand-shipsily beautiful they were as largely irrelevant to anything, either in the book or in life. I at least knew enough about life to understand that in order to be attracted to someone or fall in love with someone it is not necessary for that person to be so beautiful they put other women off their feed. I just mentally substituted that vague understanding for ‘earth-shatteringly beautiful’ as reasons for characters falling for each other.

  29. Nigel: This woman was so beautiful that when she walked into a restaurant all the other women looked at her in jealousy. Like, other women simply could not deal with how beautiful this beautiful woman was. I think that was the point where I started skimming [such] descriptions of women… as largely irrelevant to anything, either in the book or in life.

    It’s hard for me to understand how so many people (especially men) simply cannot conceive that a majority of women actually have better things to think about and concentrate on than something like this. It’s just bizarre.

    But I suppose that men and women who’ve been raised to believe that men are all that’s important, and that women are merely there to facilitate mens’ needs, desires, and importance, would see such a description as perfectly natural.

  30. I don’t generally notice sexy descriptions of women in books. But when I read The Southern Vampire Mysteries I was really struck by the descriptions of the men. Sookie’s descriptions of for example Bill, Eric and that werewolf guy was, ehm, enligthening.

  31. Personally, I haven’t got that much against objectification. I just want the objectification to go both ways. And I don’t want it to be too damned unrealistic or clichéed. And absolutely not be used as an excuse to not having to flesh out a character.

    Objectification is nice, but it should be a supplement. Not the entirety.

  32. This woman was so beautiful that when she walked into a restaurant all the other women looked at her in jealousy. Like, other women simply could not deal with how beautiful this beautiful woman was.

    There seems to be this idea (*cough cough* MALE GAZE *cough*) that women exist in public solely for men’s appreciation–for men to look at, and desire, and flirt with, and pick up on. If she’s “taken,” then her purpose is to make other men jealous of the man who “possesses” her. But it all comes down to the same thing: Her purpose, in existing in a public place, is to attract male attention. See also the canard that “men watch women; women watch themselves being watched.”

    This would imply that a woman succeeds only to the extent that all male eyes remain on her. If another woman walks in who is more beautiful/hot/sexy, she steals all available male attention, and succeeds at the previous woman’s expense. Thus, logically, each woman is in competition with every other woman, and has either triumphed over her or must be jealous of her depending on how that competition is going.

    But it all sounds like too much effort over factors I can’t control and frankly don’t care about. I’d sooner just get on with my grocery shopping.

  33. “Each woman in competition with every other woman” over male attention sounds exhausting, and a big waste of time.

  34. @Phantom: It’s hard holding a minority position in a venue, and I don’t want to add to any sense you may have that you’re under attack. You’re not; people are just disagreeing with you; but the distinction can be hard to appreciate when it’s a lot of people disagreeing with you.

    Here is what I think is the core problem. You are not personally bothered by the presentation of the women in MHI, by your own testimony. And that’s fine. Really. But you seem to be insisting that nobody should be bothered by it – that it meets some neutral standard of acceptability which, just coincidentally, matches your personal bundle of ethics, needs and aversions perfectly. I always find it convenient when that happens to me! And man, it used to happen all the time. I was the luckiest man in the world the way the objective facts of literally everything fit into my personal comfort zone.

    But in truth, you and I are each just one guy. And all the other folks in this thread are each just one guy (gal, nonbinary person etc.), and they’ve each got their own comfort zones. These comfort zones sometimes overlap to a greater or lesser degree, fuzzy as the boundaries are. For instance, different feminists will have different tolerance levels for things, as will different social conservatives, or different right-libertarians, or different Bernie Bros etc. But in each case there will also be considerable overlap.

    What I take from the various women posting in this (and other) discussions is, when they read a book, one of the questions they are looking to answer is, “What does this author think makes a woman worth writing about?”

    That may not be a question you ever find yourself asking when you read a book. It may be a question that does start mattering to you at some point. You do you. The point is, nothing whatsoever makes this an invalid question for a reader to entertain. Dana Gioia once claimed, “When we read a new poet, what we really want to do is surrender.” I think there’s something to that for all readers of all authors.

    But to surrender, there has to be trust. And for a lot of women – and some men – readers, the question of what an author thinks makes a woman worth writing about is a trust question. Let me stress once again: this question is important to them – us, count me in – for reasons of their own. The fact that it may not be an important question for you does not in any way mean it should not be an important question for them. The fact that a particular reader might find this a worthwhile question but also be willing to override her response to the answer based on other factors does not mean she’s right and others are wrong. We are talking about how people are choosing to spend their leisure time here.

    One possible answer to the question is, “When she’s hot.” Another possible answer is, “When she’s awesome at something the author esteems.” (There are a ton more potential answers.) What people upthread are saying about Correia’s answer is that it appears to be, consistently, “When she’s awesome at something the author esteems and hot.” So hotness doesn’t seem to be a sufficient condition for the author, but it seems to be a necessary one, per their experience of reading the books.

    That is what they mean by saying all the characters are “sex objects.” It’s a shorthand for hotness as a necessary condition of authorial attention. You’re responding as if people using the term must mean hotness as a sufficient condition. That’s the disconnect. The thing is, it will be entirely unproductive to you to keep trying to wrangle everyone over to your own understanding of the term. Because the problem for these readers will still be there – hotness+awesome in some other way as necessary and sufficient condition of “spotlight time”; we would just need to find a different label for it.

  35. A lot of you are missing the part where the narrator/character is a -kid-, and a male, and straight. It makes the objections silly. I was a kid once, the first thing a guy generally looks at is ‘Do I want her?’ The answer to that question is almost always ‘yes’, because kid = stupid + hormones. So you’re objecting to an accurate portrayal of a normal male response to that female character.

    When meeting a male, the first thing a kid looks at is ‘can I take him?’, by the way. That usually rates a more careful assessment than girl = yes, please. It’s automatic, it is most definitely a usual male response, and in a book with male characters one expects to see it.

    That you might not want to read such a thing is a matter of taste. I stopped reading Leckie’s Ancillary Justice when she explained what an ‘ancillary’ was, because I didn’t want to read about that. Am I going to trash Ann Leckie? No. It’s not some sort of moral fault she wrote a thing I don’t want to read, it’s my personal taste. Maybe some day she’ll write something I do want to read. If that day comes, I’ll buy her book.

    All the objections so far boil down to “how dare that man portray women in the completely normal and expected way that every guy on Earth does!” Stop reading if you don’t like it. It’s a description, not a crime against humanity.

    As far as what a ‘sex object’ is, your definition appears wide enough to easily include 100 year old nuns. My definition differs from yours in that I include ‘mere’. A ‘sex object’ in a book or movie is a character whose entire purpose is eye candy. But, again, eye candy is a thing, it has it’s uses in books and movies, it’s a narrative device and not a f-ing crime.

    Most people want to read about attractive people doing exciting things. As a writer, I want to write about that so that many readers will pay money for my book. Also, I’d much sooner write about that than have my head stuffed with grimdark and characters who need killin’. Mental hygiene is also a thing.

  36. Jim Henley, I appreciate your efforts. Thanks for the kind consideration.

    “But you seem to be insisting that nobody should be bothered by it – that it meets some neutral standard of acceptability which, just coincidentally, matches your personal bundle of ethics, needs and aversions perfectly.”

    Shao Ping made the original comment I was talking about. I’m making a distinction between ‘sex object’ and a multi-faceted character who has physical attractiveness as one of her attributes. Sex appeal vs. sex object, dueling cliches.

    Shao Ping implies that Correia’s characterization is improper and damaging to women by use of the term ‘sex object.’ That’s where my objection lies. If such a method of characterization bothers Shao Ping the reader, so be it. Taste is taste. Using one’s personal taste as the acme of moral behavior, and treating something not to one’s taste as a crime, that is the objection I have.

    As I said above, I didn’t like Ancillary Justice. I stopped reading it, because the subject matter was bothering me. Does this imply something eeeeevile and horrible about the author? No it most profoundly does not, and for me to claim it does would be idiotic.

    Hence, my point.

    As well, I think it is obvious that people generally prefer things that match their preferences and way of thinking. To denigrate people like myself because they like the set of preferences contained in a book such as Monster Hunter International seems to be one of the main purposes of this entire blog, and certainly the aim of many posters here. I am not allowed to like MHI, because it is Badthink. I must prefer Ancillary Justice, because it is approved Goodthink.

    I’m an aspy, so people yelling “You’re Doing It Wrong!” is a central theme of life. Entirely unremarkable, if a bit tiresome. I’m not doing it wrong, I’m doing it my way. Free country and all, y’know.

    Again, thanks for not being in the crowd of shouters. Your comment was excellent, and interesting.

  37. The Phantom on December 29, 2015 at 9:10 am said:
    A lot of you are missing the part where the narrator/character is a -kid-

    No he’s not. He’s an adult with a job.

    the objections so far boil down to “how dare that man portray women in the completely normal and expected way that every guy on Earth does!”

    Do you honestly believe that every male human on Earth thinks and acts like that towards women?

    That does not jibe with my experience in any way.

  38. To be clearer, I don’t think anything is wrong with people who enjoy reading “Monster Hunter International” and books like it. They are having fun, no doubt about that and nothing wrong with it.

    But the characters are really shallow, and to try to tell people they are not is silly.

  39. Lorcan Nagle: My tribute to Mason Williams —

    Those box tickers, ain’t they a hoot?
    Tickin’ wrong boxes, and off they scoot.
    Ticky they go in the middle of the night
    Still tickin’ them boxes by the dawn’s early light…

  40. @Phantom
    Thanks for spurring an interesting conversation about books, writing, and characterization.

    I enjoy the MHI books for what they offer but I also like the Ancillary books (reading the first and really liking it) for their contents.

    I do think the characterization in MHI is shallow – as it is in many of the books in that genre; but I do find them enjoyable.

  41. @Phantom why is it that you think criticising something means people think you shouldn’t be allowed to read it because it is badthink? Is that what you think criticism is?

  42. The Phantom: You absolutely do not need to prefer book X over book Y to play here. I can cite multiple conversations had where someone simply does not grok one of the touchstone books that are popular around here (God Stalk, Ancillary *, Goblin Emperor) plus more general disagreements about other books. (Bold as Love, Lord Foul’s Bane) in which one person clearly described what they loved and another person failed to be moved but got a better appreciation of what the book lover was seeing. At its best, the MHI conversation is striving for that last.

    But despite your efforts to paint it otherwise, your initial objection to Shao Ping’s comment was “Prove she’s a sex object”. Shao Ping supplied quotes, quotes which in fact were about a remarkably shallow view of the woman’s attributes as sexually appealing. You then switched to MERE sex object, even though the previous discussion had made clear that was not the case. And now you’re moving to “Sexually attractive =/= sex object” (Which, if it were in fact your point, I would agree with) with a side order of “But all straight young males are really like that.”

    Maybe they are. But I’ve seen plenty of books about hot-blooded young males attracted to a female character in which they manage not to objectify the females in their life. Take Percy Jackson. Perfect age for the “Linoleum makes me want to have sex.” effect. Gets a steady girlfriend he adores, but has other women he’s attracted to along the way. Also contains females who are not attractive, or attractive but not to his taste* but not judged against for it.

    Yes, it’s written for YA, but if you’ve read enough YA, you know that sex is far from taboo, and guys going agog at hot girls is common, more so from male authors who remember what it was like.

    The people objecting to Correia’s portrayal, even those who can only go by quotes supplied here, have seen guys who can describe an attractive woman, or a man being attracted to a woman, without causing the reaction “Oh, god, not another sex object.”

    So maybe trust that people know what sex object versus sexually attractive is. Trust that they’re aware men get attracted to women and sometimes should be written as doing so. And that when they critique someone’s manner of doing so as objectifying, maybe they know something about it.

    * who’s hot is at least partly subjective, which is another strong argument against the existence of a woman so hot every woman in the room is instantly jealous, or of women for whom every straight male instantly goes gaga. Barring the supernatural.

  43. The Phantom on December 29, 2015 at 9:10 am said:

    A lot of you are missing the part where the narrator/character is a -kid-, and a male, and straight. It makes the objections silly.

    I don’t think people missed that – there was a discussion on the point and additionally the extent to which the narrator is a proxy for the author – a big man, once applied for the army but was turned down for medical reasons, an interest in guns, concealed carry permit, a bit of a “fat kid” at school, a career as an an accountant…
    MHI is a wish-fulfillment fantasy – and that’s OK because Larry Correia makes it work and one way of tapping into other people’s personal fantasies is to articulate your own. However, in this context “Owen” isn’t just a character but a fantasy version of Larry and the women he encounters are part of that fantasy.

    So who are the female characters?
    Humans:
    Julie: the main love interest
    Holly: the new recruit to MHI with Owen
    Dorcas: the ageing secretary

    Apparent Humans (Vampires etc):
    Julie’s mom (with whom Owen nearly has sex because she is disguised as Julie)
    Koriniha, High Priestess of the Temple of Neihor (whom he encounters when accessing the memories of the baddy “The priestess’ hips swayed beneath her thin robes. She was a wanton creature, beautiful and cunning wise in many arts unknown in my homeland. I had already taken her as my concubine, as was part of our initial agreement.”)

    Non-humans
    Gretchen the Goblin
    [The Elf Queen Ilrondelia (more a minor character)]

    Dorcas & Gretchen [and the Elf Queen] are portrayed as overtly unsexy to Owen- either as old or ugly [or obese]. Julie and Holly are portrayed in terms of their sexual availbility (the good sexy) and Julie’s mom and Koriniha are portrayed in terms of seductress (the bad sexy). The only women who don’t fall into Owen’s perspective of beyond the pale or sexy are passing characters (a patient in a hospital etc). All the women Owen regularly encounters are either women he interacts with (at least on occasions) on a sexual level or placed far out of sexual possibility for him (e.g. a burkha wearing goblin with tusks).

    Does this make MHI the worst book in the world or irredeemably sexist etc? No, apart from anything else it was a first novel that was then surprisingly successful. As a consequence Larry C’s early writing gets a lot more scrutiny than other authors. It really is OK to point out flaws in a book and discuss ways in which an author could have written a potentially better book. Larry wrote a book that is good enough not dismiss out of hand, that really does have great action sequences…but it also illustrates neatly a problem with how women are portrayed. Yes, it is an advance on books that have no women characters at all, and it is an advance on books that have some women characters but they are all just passive props while the male characters get on with stuff.

    For anybody playing along at home here is a fun game to play with MHI: gender swap Earl Harbinger. Earl is the tough leader of the most elite Monster Hunter platoon. Let’s make him Pearl. Here is how she would now first appear:
    “The woman was of average height and lean, with short-cropped, sandy blond hair, probably in her mid-forties. With no really remarkable features, she was not a memorable-looking woman, but emanated an old-school toughness when she strutted into the room, an attitude like a Bogart or a Cagney from the golden age of movies. A cigarette hung lazily from the corner of her mouth in clear violation of hospital rules.”
    What is noticeable about Earl (now Pearl) is that Larry plays down his appearance (he literally has ‘no remarkable features’) and when he is compared with others it isn’t in terms of his body but in terms of personality. Yes, he is compared to Bogart and Cagney but in terms of the attitude rather than how he looks (and it would be tough to look like both Cagney *and* Bogart). There isn’t actually anything specifically *male* about Earl other than tropes like toughness – even his physical strength and endurance derive from a spoilery-source.

  44. I just want the objectification to go both ways.

    The trick in equally objectifying men is when you look at men in comics and video games, their portrayal is of a male power fantasy, not something that women are going to necessarily see as hot.

  45. @Phantom no one has said MHI shouldn’t be published or read. Some of us have expressed why we haven’t enjoyed it. No suggestion of wrongthink/wrongful. Maybe tome down the hyperbole and reread @Jim Henley’s comment as well as the thread again to see the moving goalposts.

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