#Woman Who Rides Like a Man

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[renyerokami]

I've always loved how right from the beginning in the Alanna books, published 40 years ago. Tamora was normalizing the idea of sex workers being valid:

"Good women may not speak to her and good men may not know her." Alanna thought of the women of the Court of the Rogue and sighed. "That's sad. Some of the most intelligent women I knew as I was growing up were prostitutes."

what other children's book of the 80's was going to have the main character say that?

I would die for her

You tell them Flory! Sex work is real work and just as fucking valid as everything else. More valid than people sitting around making money just for existing!

Flory is honestly my favourite character in this whole book.

[where-our-stories-start]

Little Women (2019) // Simone de Beauvoir // The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Tamora Pierce) // The Color Purple // Persuasion (Jane Austen) // Catherine, Called Birdy (2022) // tumblr.com

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Quartet That Started It All

As followers of this blog will note, this is not actually the quartet that started it all for me, but it DID launch author Tamora Pierce's career in the 1980s, and Alanna remains absolutely beloved among Pierce's heroines. Let's talk the Song of the Lioness Quartet.

In a classic case of "if I can't do this as a girl, then I'll do this as a boy and I have a handy twin brother to go full Twelfth Night with," Alanna of Trebond begins The First Adventure by dressing as a boy to train as a page in Tortall's royal court. This book introduces all our main characters and establishes Alan the page amongst his peers and Alanna as she finds herself and her place in chivalry.

One of the other amazing things about Alanna's story overall is that she begins it absolutely terrified of her own magical gift. Her arc includes learning to work with her magic rather than to fear it, and that's a twist on magic users that I really appreciated. We often get overly confident magic users--indeed, we'll get TWO of them later in the series--but it's rare that we get magic users who are fully aware of their powers and are still absolutely terrified of them. So of course, the story and the world and Pierce herself keep throwing Alanna into situations where she has no choice but to develop and use her gift. It's so, so good. This first book covers Alanna's page years, and we move into her squire years in book two.

In the Hand of the Goddess really expands on Alanna's key relationship with Prince Jon on Conte, Duke Roger of Conte, and Geroge Cooper. Alanna moves into a wider world of adult politics and stakes in this book. From being able to defeat an older, stronger, and more experienced opponent in a duel to developing her healing skills when a wound puts her out of commission during a war, Alanna cements her skills, connections, and position in society. This culminates with unmasking Roger as an attempting regicide and the accidental reveal of her gender.

This book is really, really good, and extends Alanna's childhood fear of magic to her fear of Roger specifically in a really natural, logical way. I could say more about the details, but these two books have an episodic vibe to them, so I won't spend too much time exploring every single key plot event.

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man sees Alanna spending her first year as a knight in the desert, with a Bazhir tribe. She becomes their shaman by way of self-defense; she murders their first shaman when he tries to murder her for "being unnatural." Then it falls to Alanna to train three magic users for the tribe, and this is where we see more nuance into how different magic users relate to their powers, from sheer hubris to fear to "this is just part of me, let's do this." It's a phenomenal experience for Alanna, and she learns as much from her students as they do

Book three also sees Jonathan bitching to hell and back about having to be king, which is not a great look, and it's one Alanna calls him on. He spends most of the book alternating between pitching a hissy fit, begging Alanna to marry him, and training to take over as Voice of the Tribes. The interesting thing here is that Alanna refuses to marry Jon. He is trying to fit Alanna into his own fairy tale, and she very much goes "That isn't our relationship, I can't do that. We aren't meant to be like that, and that's ok." If I could inject that lesson into humanity's collective head, I would. It's well done and it's great.

Lioness Rampant picks up on Alanna's travels after she leaves the Bazhir, and eventually sees her return to Corus with a magical artifact to help secure Jonathan's position as king.

There's also the teeny tiny complication that Alanna's twin brother, Thom, has resurrected Duke Roger. Absolute chaos ensues, and Roger almost manages to take out the entire court during Jonathan's coronation. Nobody should have to kill an evil sorceror twice, but Alanna did.

If you want to dive into Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe, starting with Alanna is absolutely a good choice. These books hold a very soft spot in my heart, and they're never not engaging.

[alnst-hyunaluka]

Also, as a woc myself, can I ask from this fandom that unless confirmed by canon, can we not shove the one dark-skinned, disabled, female character into the "only allowed to feel selfless love for humanity or/and platonic love for her deceased brother" corner? Pretty please?

[the-dust-jacket]

Okay y’all what do we think about the new Song of the Lioness covers?

[perhaps-mr-collins-has-a-cousin]

😩

[swashbucklery]

I know I am never going to be a Star Wars Fandom Person and that I am not reacting to Ahsoka the way the rest of the internet is reacting because that was, without a doubt, the funniest dumbest gay thing I've ever seen??? HER STORMTROOPER FRIENDS LEFT

AND SHE STARTED CRYING

AND THEN RAN AWAY ON A WOLF (yes it's a howler i know it's a howler shh) TO BE SAD IN THE MOORS ALONE FOREVER(????)

NO ONE GIVE HER A HUG THIS IS FUCKING INCREDIBLE, I need to see her carve BAYLAN SUX into the side of a spaceship with her lightsaber. I need to see her dramatically tearing up as she learns that Evil Doesn't Pay I want her to listen to Space Evanescence alone in her room in the dark I need her to go to the Space Hot Topic and spend too much money on nail polish that DEFINITELY DOESN'T MAKE HER THINK OF SABINE this is critical to my enjoyment of Star Wars.

[buk0wskis]

final verdict

also with this my oscar playlist is up! just a sweet lil angel boy who deserves nothing but the world. brother needed a bodyguard like yesterday

[bumblingbabooshka]

Amanda Grayson with her Hubby and Stepson

[hestiasroom]

does anyone else's mom think they are "mean" for having boundaries? or is that just my mom?

[dr-dendritic-trees]

So... in between the last time I reread Woman and now, I may have, possibly, got totally obsessed with fibercrafts... but I love the sequence with Alanna learning to weave.

Now, its a great sequence even for a non-weirdo, because Alanna is getting comfortable with being a woman, and she's learning reciprocally from her Bazhir apprentices.

But also, I love and can deeply relate to the little scene where's Alanna's like... watching them weave with growing envy, because its just... a loom.

Now I want to write a fic where Raoul or Jon or other various someones come across Alanna weaving (because I guarantee she still does it occasionally), and she gets defensive about her feminine hobby and they're just like "can we try".

[dlnqnt]

baby this is the worst example of career inspiration i have ever read

[harmofud]

Gonna ring in the New Year by saying that you cannot easily decide who is and is not trans based purely on body type or facial features alone, and doing so often plays into some nasty western societal conceptions of what beauty is.

I'm very much cis and people think I'm trans all the time bc I have big shoulders, a wide jaw line, and a big nose. If I, a cis woman, have those features, that means that those features are not indicative of gender at all and cannot/should not be used to determine who is and isn't trans.

My dad has a friend who is a Polynesian woman. She's super tall, buff, and stocky, and people are assholes about it and keep asking if she's really a woman. That's a huge dick move first of all, and second of all, she's cis! That means that you cannot use height, strength, and stockiness as metrics for being a cis woman.

Women world wide have so many different features that you cannot restrict trans women from the pile without restricting cis women as well. There are examples of cis women being able to grow mustaches and beards, and those ladies get attacked double about a thing their body does because it's not female enough.

The thing that I mentioned earlier about it being a Western beauty standard problem is that there's this idea that all women have (or should have) hourglass bodies with big boobs and big butts, big thighs, small calves, ankles, and feet, thin and angular jawline (although small and round jawline works as well), small nose, thin shoulders, thin arms, no acne, long hair, and be short but not so short that you look 'weird' compared to your partner. That's so specific! Some races just aren't going to have those features and I doubt any race has them all! I don't know any woman who fills every category, and viewing every woman who violates that hyper specific standard as a Judas of some kind is not only insulting but also exhausting. Like damn girl, you really live like that?

I'm just saying that 'being a woman' is a societal group that we as humans made up. True, there are physical differences between male and female, but not so much that we're different ass species who inherently think differently and act differently and do everything differently. We're all human beings at the end of the day. I share a lot of physical features with guys I know and I'm cis and always will be. I shouldn't have to argue with people about whether or not I fulfill the beauty standard enough to be considered a woman, and if I shouldn't have to do it, other people shouldn't have to do it either, whether they be trans or not.

And, to finalize my point, I really truly don't want to he defined purely by whether or not I'm able to carry children. Haven't we, as women, fought against that idea for centuries? Haven't we, as women, struggled historically against claims that infertility makes us not good women? Haven't we, as women, fought for our ability of self-determination and the ability to be seen as more than our sex or gender, and that we have value even after we've done made the baby?

Ladies, I'm just saying that if you exclude the Western beauty standard and also refuse to define yourself by your baby-making propensity (like how we have fought for the ability to do), there's precious little that truly defines womanhood. I am a woman simply because I am. I'm assuming trans women feel the same way. None of us are so different, not really. Don't be insulted if someone asks for your pronouns, and don't be insulted if someone says sir instead of ma'am at the grocery store. Just be polite about it.

[marklikely]

you guys know that phenomenon where dudes will be like "women aren't funny" but its just bc when a woman makes a joke they don't get it and take her seriously and just think she's like an idiot? like a woman will say smth silly as a joke and they'll just be like "smh you can't be serious you're so stupid" bc theyd rather think a woman is stupid than think that she's just saying it to be funny.

i feel like thats what happens in the reviews every time a woman tries to direct a campy b movie right now.

[applebunch]

far more compelling for me than the fact that narrators can time-travel is the reason WHY narrators can time-travel. in-universe acknowledgement of "nothing in their universe exists outside of the things that are 'on mic'". if it isn't in an episode, it didn't actually happen. that's an actual rule that exists in the story. it has been canonized.

the stamatis's parents never spent a second alive. gemma and charlotte never actually had their wedding. every single character has only existed as far back as their flashbacks can throw them. and that's IF they have flashbacks! flashbacks are not common! leon dragging michael out of the bar didn't get a flashback, so it didn't happen! like not in just the implicit way that applies to all characters in all stories, that's an in-universe rule!

but what's really getting me is this:

greater boston starts with leon killing himself. it starts because he kills himself. the foundation of the story is leon's death on the roller coaster. that's why everything else happens. leon's death makes something in their strange world into a story worth telling. the story is the only medium through which their world is allowed to exist.

leon's death is what brought their world into existence.

or, fun reversal, the world was created SO leon could die in it, which would then create a story intriguing enough to justify the existence of the rest of the world.

huh.