#but actually I really want to see a paper on the BAMF moms of sci-fi

[allmimsyweretheborogroves]

The Favor

[Currently Accepting Book Recommendations]

I’ve been thinking about strong female heroines recently.  This thought was triggered by reading a short piece on the internet about how characters who are strong female heroines typically reject all aspects of the traditionally feminine in favor of the traditionally masculine.  I don’t necessarily object to this, as I think women can and should occupy traditionally masculine spaces, but I thought that the author made an excellent point that this occupation takes place as a part of a rejection of the traditionally feminine.  

Consider Sarah Connor from the Terminator franchise—she’s absolutely a strong female heroine, and one of my favorites, but she sits in a very masculine space usually occupied by male action heroes.  As a result, we never see her engage in stereotypically feminine activities: she doesn’t cook, she doesn’t clean, she doesn’t sew, and she is not a love interest.  [An interesting examination could be made of Sarah Connor and the role of motherhood in the action/sci fi genre, cf. Cordelia Naismith in the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, but this is not that paper.]

Still, it got me thinking.  A lot of my favorite heroines reject the stereotypical feminine aspects in favor of the masculine—cf. any Tamora Pierce novel, particularly the Lioness quartet.  In all fairness to Alanna, Tamora Pierce does a really great job of trying to balance this duality in Alanna’s position as the first female knight of Tortall who is really good with a sword, but also likes pretty dresses and earrings.  Later Pierce novels do more of this, but have a distinct tendency towards the rejection of traditionally feminine works.  

I am now really interested in undeniably strong female heroines who engage in masculine spaces without abandoning or rejecting feminine spaces.  I don’t want to get so caught up in binaries that I can’t see the forest for the trees.  [Another really fascinating paper could be written about gender roles/the absence thereof in the latest Transformers comics, especially in regards to conjunx endurae, pronoun usage, and Functionalism, but this is not that paper either.]

But I wanted to think about how a lady heroine might inhabit a spectrum where she could both be a military prodigy and a ‘well-behaved’ lady in a society with strict gender roles.  How could such a heroine inhabit her own narrative?  Could she be passive and active?  How would other women in her world react?  How would men?  What about that love interest thing?  Cordelia Naismith and Alanna of Trebond both have complex relationships in their stories, but the relationships are not the totality of the character.  What if the heroine and her society encountered another culture that took a much more egalitarian view of gender roles (or just didn’t have them)?  

I took a classic feminine-masculine scenario—the chivalric gifting of favors—and plopped it in my current NaNoWriMo story idea.

She came to see them off.  She arrived late and alone, standing separately from Lady Fiara and Lady Corianna’s entourages.  While the cut of her dress was fashionable, she was a long lean line in somber black, a sharp contrast to the bright clothing favored by the other Danarian ladies.  

Lady Fiara stepped forward to tie a yellow ribbon around Emperor Gregory’s right arm.  She pressed a quick kiss to the Emperor’s hand.   “By the Light and by the Four, I grant you my favor in battle to come,” she said in florid formal Danarian.  

The Emperor inclined his head.  “You honor me with your favor, Lady,” he declared the room, touching the back of his hand to his lips.  The gathered entourage giggled and twittered like a flock of brightly colored birds.  The Ankarrë portion of the war party shifted uncomfortably.  

Kantare stood silently at the rear while Lady Corianna tied a long pink ribbon around Lord Vandarian’s arm and pressed a kiss against his lips.  More giggling and fluttering.

Silvergun would not have even noticed her, had he not been looking.  Even if he hadn’t, Admiral Shrike elbowed him subtly in the side, and gestured with her eyebrows at the solemn figure.  

“I didn’t think she’d come,” Shrike muttered, curling her lip at the spectacle Lord Vandarian and Lady Corianna were making.  

“She does like to confound expectations,” he murmured back.  From the sideways look she gave him, his tone might have been warmer than the situation warranted.  He pretended not to notice.  

His command staff fidgeted restlessly, unused to the Danarian-style formality and ritual, which seemed to be finally coming to a close.  Impatient with the necessities of politics, Silvergun turned to go, his admirals falling into step around him.  

“Warlord Silvergun,” a clear voice rang out, over the High Court’s farewells.  He turned to see that Kantare had stepped forward, a strange little smile on her lips.  

“Lady Admiral?” he replied.  

There was some muttering from the Danarians at this, and he could hear Shrike hiss, “She’s not an admiral any more, my lord!”  

Kantare bowed slightly, her hair falling forward to cover her eyes, one of which was still blackened and bruised from the Helix Offensive.  From somewhere on her person she produced a single scrap of black cloth.  Silvergun caught only the slightest glitter of gold, as she tied it around his left arm.  

“Luck’s blessing upon you,” she told him.  Before the warlord could respond, she popped up on her toes and pressed a lightning fast kiss to his cheek.  

Slivergun blinked and it was over.  The Danarian crowd had gone dead silent.  Kantare winked one glittering golden eye at him, and strode back to the rest of the High Court.  

“My thanks, Lady Admiral,” he called after her, because he did not know what else to say.  From Shrike’s slight huff of breath, he suspected that his cheeks had gone faintly red.  Something weird and particularly Danarian was afoot here, and while he did not appreciate being used to play whatever political game she was engaged in, the lady admiral had proved herself to be worth following before.  If nothing else, it was worth it to see Lord Vandarian looking like he had eaten something rotten.  Emperor Gregory, on the other hand, looked puzzled and ever so slightly approving.  

“Can I see it, my lord?” Lorien asked, practically breathless.  The redhead had cornered them as soon as Silvergun and Shrike had made the bridge on the Conqueror.  Cassian hovered over his shoulder, looking somewhere between intrigued and peeved.  

“See what?” Silvergun tried to dodge the commander, but Lorien was quicker.   “The favor!  The Admiral’s favor!” Lorien dodged Silvergun’s elbow with impressive finesse. 

“I can’t possibly imagine why she’d give one to you,” Cassian snarled half-heartedly.  

“Back off, the lot of you,” Shrike ordered, using her bulk to physically displace the instant Danarians.  Silvergun gave her a sour look.  She ignored him.  “Now what’s this about a favor?” she wanted to know.  

“What do you mean, ‘what’s this’?” Lorien yelped.  “She gave it to you—I want to see it!”  

“Explain this ‘favor’ thing,” Silvergun ordered, his tone leaving no room for protest.  

“Guess it’s a Danarian thing, then,” Lorien and Cassian exchanged significant looks.  

“Favors are an old tradition on Danar,” Cassian explained, snapping to attention.  “When a lord went off to war, a lady might give him a token of her favor—popular opinion disagrees on whether having a favor is supposed to make you lucky or to warn your opponents off since you’ve got someone at waiting home.  It’s a pretty important tradition—”

“As you might expect with the High Court,” Lorien interrupted.  “There are all sorts of rules and rituals involved.”

“Naturally,” Silvergun grumbled.  Leave it to the Danarian High Court to make anything difficult.

Cassian sniffed and continued, “Any lady of the High Court who is courting, engaged, or married is expected to make a favor for her lord.  It’s also perfectly acceptable for a lady to indicate her willingness to engage in a flirtation with a favor.”  

“What does that mean?” Shrike asked.  Both Danarians shrugged at her.  

“You got me,” Lorien said.  “The Admiral isn’t really a…flirtation sort of lady.  Even if she is High Court.”  

Shrike laughed, “This is the woman who told the Ferrulian ambassador that she would, and I quote, ‘Shove a thermonuclear device up your ass so far that your grandchildren will be radioactive,’ if he didn’t cooperate.”

“Be respectful,” Cassian hissed, and then shook himself.  “True, her ladyship has recently been more of that sort of lady then what Danarian ladies usually are, but her current position in the High Court is…well,” he shrugged.  

Silvergun carefully slipped the strip of black from his arm.  Shrike, Lorien, and Cassian all crowded forward to stare at it.  It was not a simple black ribbon as he’d originally supposed, golden embroidery spilled across the inner surface. The stitches were neat and almost invisible. 

Cassian leaned forward to examine the favor closely.  He was careful not to touch it.  “Fabric is good quality steelsilk,” he hummed, thoughtfully.  “The stitching is the sort of decorative thing High Court ladies learn so they can make things like this.  She must have embroidered it herself—did you see if Lord Vandarian or the Emperor’s favors had embroidery?”  

“Didn’t look like it,” Shrike told him.  “But I wasn’t really looking.”  

“What does it mean?” Silvergun asked, perhaps more sharply than he meant to. 

“Well, usually favors are just a nice ribbon in the lady’s chosen color, but her ladyship chose steelsilk in black—so she chose something to last, in a color that blends well with your uniform.  On your left arm too—your dominant hand—she was paying attention.  The embroidery took time; she had to have planned this and worked on it—steelsilk is very difficult to work with.  The design…,” he trailed off.  “Actually, I have no idea what the design is—looks like some sort of circuitry, perhaps?”  

Lorien and Shrike peered over Cassian’s shoulders.  

“It’s a diagram of the master circuit for the dreadnoughts,” a smarmy new voice interrupted.  Vexx had wedged his way in next to Lorien.  “What’s going on?  What is that?” 

Silvergun scowled enormously, furious that he’d missed the traitor’s entrance, and closed his hand over the favor.  “Nothing, traitor,” he growled.  Vexx absolutely did not need to be involved in any discussion relating to Kantare.  

Shrike burst out laughing, startling them all.  “How fantastically Kantare-like,” she cackled.  “She gave you the Danarian High Court equivalent of a thermonuclear device!”  

Lorien’s grin was bright and fierce.  “That’s our Admiral!” he cheered.  “Won’t let the bastards keep her down!”  

Even Cassian was smiling.  “That is a good favor—traditionally, embroidery on a favor is supposed to be of something that will protect the lord in battle.”  

“A dreadnought will certainly do that,” Shrike snickered.  

“I fail to understand what, exactly, is going on here,” Vexx sniped.  “What does a scrap of fabric with the master circuit stitched onto it have to do with Kantare?”  

“The Admiral gave Lord Silvergun her favor to protect him in battle,” Lorien explained.  “It’s a really good favor, too!” 

Vexx made a face.  “I’d rather she came herself.  That would be much more useful.  Much more so than a scrap of fabric.” 

Silvergun studied the little scrap of fabric, sourly thinking that he actually agreed with the traitor for once.  A sudden silence on the bridge suggested that the rest of them thought the same.  

“And why’d she give it to you?” Vexx added, squinting at Silvergun.  The warlord bared his teeth in a savage grin that had the weapons engineer subsiding.  

“It’s a reminder, you know,” Cassian said, suddenly.  “A reminder that even if she isn’t here, she’s fighting with us too.  As a High Court lady, it’s all she’s allowed to do, really.”  

Shrike scoffed angrily, “Sometimes your Danarian sensibilities about what a lady can or cannot do are really stupid.”  

“Indeed, but, the lady has spoken clearly,” Silvergun said, raising his voice to be heard across the bridge.  He slipped the favor back onto his arm, embroidered side out.  “She has commanded us to win the war, and so we shall.  Admiral Shrike, your battle plans!”  

“Yes, my lord,” Shrike snapped to attention, leading them to the holodeck in the middle of the bridge.  

As Silvergun listened to his Shrike brief them on her strategy, he could still feel the soft press of Kantare’s lips against his cheek.