#karhide

[chuck-ridderodder]

Primary thoughts on The Left Hand of Darkness

I've just finished Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which if you haven't read, I believe a spoiler alert is in order for this post.

After reading The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and subsequently devouring the Earthsea Cycle, I have become an avid fan of Le Guin's work, both in fantasy and science fiction. Though I can't help but feel as if I am somehow late to the party in that regard.

This is not to be a full review of The Left Hand of Darkness, as I do believe in letting a book percolate on the brain before passing judgment; however, I do want to share some immediate thoughts.

By God, she can paint a whole society in few strokes. Both Karhide and Orgoreyn are as vivid to me as Venice or Austria (places I have yet to see, but have been related to me by friends and/or acquaintances). Grand cities, quiet villages, and the icy cold of the Gobrin Glacier are impressed upon the reader with the lightest of touches, never breaking the illusion and serving the characters as vivid backgrounds.

I found chapters 15-19 of particular interest. The rythym of the story seemed to change here, and Le Guin takes her time letting Estraven and Genly Ai crawl towards Karhide across the bitter wilderness. The time stretches for the reader as well as the characters, some scenes being repeated from both perspectives.

I believe in these chapters we are more dialed in to the characters' thoughts and feelings, peering closer and closer into the nature of their relationship during their journey. They formed a habit, a routine, monotonous and yet comforting in the simplicity of their mission.

Genly Ai describes how he feels about that time in this passage from the beginning of chapter 18:

"We are inside, the two of us, in shelter, at rest, at the center of all things. Outside, as always, lies the great darkness, the cold, death's solitude. In such fortunate moments as I fall asleep I know beyond doubt what the real center of my own life is, that time which is past and lost and yet is permanent, the enduring moment, the heart of warmth. I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, an often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy."

Joy. Despite the pain, cold, and weariness Genly Ai describes a feeling of joy. What is the source of this joy? He doesn't exactly say. He deems this period in his life as the center, a theme that comes up in earlier chapters dealing with Gethenian mythos. The center of ones life, the center of time, etc.

Just before being rescued by Estraven he is trapped in a work/death camp in Orgoreyn, which he will surely remember as the worst time of his life, the most miserable. That is not deemed the center, or the most important. It's the warmth of the tent, the seclusion on the ice, and the forging of the companion-bond between he and his companion that Genly Ai cites as the center. A bond that is quickly (spoiler) broken when Estraven dies.

They are not romantically involved, nor sexually. They just work together, they survive together.

I think that extreme of a situation is not one that is easily come by for any reader. However, at least for myself there are a few memories that I could deem the "center" of my life as it stands today. These memories somewhat echo the experiences of Genly Ai and Estraven. One in particular was an afternoon spent alone with a friend before we parted after graduating from university. We cried, and lay in the sun in my empty dorm room until the sun drifted towards the horizon. I felt an intense bond to this person, and even today can picture that tiny room, the sunlight through the window, and the color of their eyes. I felt (at the time) that I was in the center of time. The center of my life.

In some later passages Genly Ai recalls specific details about Estraven's hair, or the smell of the tent that feel oddly familiar to how I experience memories that I've carried with me. Maybe I don't recall the conversations, but I'll remember certain details forever.

I'm not exactly sure how the comments/messages works on Tumblr.com yet, but please let me know your thoughts if you have any differing opinions or notes. I would love to discuss this book! Again, it's quite fresh to me so I am still settling on my opinions etc.

[a-honap-leanya]

I am literally about to start uklgposting bc of coming of age in karhide

why was I procrastinating reading these short stories...

when I saw the words *Praise then Darkness*, I almost screamed back *AND CREATION UNFINISHED!!!!*

what am I doing to myself again

anyway, back to reading 💖💖💖

[ihavedonenothingright]

If I had a nickel for every character in a book I've read who:

speaks bluntly

is exiled from home

wards off sexual advances with violence

becomes an enemy of the state

believes they're unworthy of love

is kind of a daoist

has at least one somewhat problematic romantic relationship

keeps trying to help this dude who hates them

occasionally wants to stab said dude (violent)

occasionally wants to stab said dude (sexual)

is constantly surrounded by eerie and symbolic foreshadowing

blames themselves for everything

would like to pretend they don't experience emotions

dies in a tragic and (implied to be) suicidal way

and:

would be diagnosed with autism under different circumstances

... I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but is enough to make me examine my preferences in fiction.

[l3st1b0urn3s-707]

Fun fact, gethenians have periods! Os at least something pretty similar to a period. This is shown in the short story Coming of age in Karhide (featured in The birthday of the world and other stories), where Sov, a karhidish teenager, starts to go into puberty and experiences their first kemmer.

At one point of the story Sov wakes up in a pool of blood that's formed in their bed, and I belive they spent most of the day crying and not knowing what was really happening or how to handle it. And I think that's the best (and probably only) representation of a period I've ever read. Because I'm Sov. At least half of the people who're reading this are Sov. Every menstruating person in the world has gone through the same experience. Yet I've never read of a main character on a fantasy/ scifi book being on their period apart from this story. And I think that's what makes Le Guin's stories so beutiful.

They might describe humans from a completely diferent planet, culture, and with a different anatomy. But they're still humans.

[estravens-tits]

What other le guin have u read?

None actually! I’m so deep into The Left Hand of Darkness that I’m holding off on reading the rest of Le Guin’s stuff lest I fall further into obsession and become even more of an annoyance to the people I know in real life.

But I promised myself a few of her books once I move to my next job in December. (As a treat.) Any recs for what I should read next?

In the meantime I’ve been reading kind of a disparate smorgasbord which includes

1. The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell

2. 1984

3. Legendborn

4. They Both Die at the End

5. The Priory of the Orange Tree

6. The Murderbot Diaries

7. Crier’s War

8. Dune

and

9. The Stormlight Archives

and I of course have many opinions on all of them, including niche comparisons between them and The Left Hand of Darkness.

[lepetitmonstre]

Finished The Left Hand of Darkness and oh my God Ursela why did you do this to me

[owlbelly]

musing about Le Guin & Gethenian sexuality

i'm reading all my Le Guin lately in this volume of Hainish stories i bought a few years ago since i had already read TLHOD, knew i wanted to read Dispossessed, & figured i would not regret owning as much of her work as possible (correct)

so last night i read both "Winter's King" (the version from 1975 with she/her pronouns, though it has the '69 original too) & "Coming of Age in Karhide" (1995) - i was both thrown off & kind of delighted by how different the 90s story is. like thank god we finally get a little Gethenian queerness but also the language is so funny in comparison, let Karhidish kids say fuck i guess? maybe once you kemmer you just don't say it anymore because of your shifgrethor.

for real though, reading sci-fi about a genderless society where sexuality is celebrated/respected, as an agender queer with a lot of shame & trauma??? gghgh. hgghghhh. they just go to the kemmerhouse & bang whoever they want while eating snacks :') i like that you can do monogamy if you want but it's not required. honestly the idea of not thinking about sex at all except for once a month & there being a distinct cultural space for it during that time sounds like so much pressure off.

i think she still could have done more thinking around asexuality (i am SURE there are Gethenians who don't kemmer or who are on longer cycles etc.) & people who consistently prefer same-sex partners - maybe even kemmer male or female based on same-sex pheromones! or just prefer to kemmer in a particular body configuration. i mean she mentions that in Orgoreyn people do that via injecting hormones but it comes off as being part of Orgoreyn's cultural artificiality/deception, which sucks. like ah yes Orgoreyn is superficially more socially permissive but built on lies & control whereas socially/interpersonally strict Karhide is more natural/honest. a little bit of City of Illusions transphobia creeping into her most trans book like come on!!! but i am still giving her props as a cis woman thinking about shit at all in 1969.

anyway i am feeling a way about living on the unfortunate binary-loving planet in a culture that is PARTICULARLY awful about sex

[spocks-got-a-glock]

Ursula K Le Guin, why must you hurt me so?

After everything they've been through? After all that, the arduous, life threatening, soul forging journey they made together to get to Karhide, and Estraven just dies? It seems so unfair. It's probably meant to. I am feeling so many feelings right now. It's made me sad yes, but I'm finding that I'm moved more deeply the more I think about the deeper implications. I'm struggling to word my thoughts clearly but I'll try nonetheless.

Estraven sacrifices his life for Genly, charging into the guns of the border guards. He knows that he is a threat to Genly's mission and, seeing that there is now no other choice, no other way for him to disappear, takes it upon himself to eliminate that threat. It's noble and brave and heartbreaking.

But then there's "Arek!". Estraven cries out the name of his dead brother in his mind, his final word as he dies. His brother who he (romantically) loved and swore vows to. His brother who died, how we're never quite told, but given the parallels to the folk tale of the two brothers that we're told, it very likely might have been suicide, and Estraven follows suit. It almost seems like he's trying to join him, wherever suicide victims end up in the Handdara or Yomesh religion.

Who did Estraven die for? Genly or Arek? The answer I think might be both as one.

We're confronted again by how Genly and Estraven's relationship, their love, seems unable to separate from the relationship between Estraven and his brother. Genly says, in the moments of Estraven's death, "only in a way he answered my love for him"..... and that answer is "Arek!". Even when they mindspoke for the first time, Estraven hears Genly's words in his head in his brother's voice. To Estraven intimacy with Genly is inextricable from the intimacy he had with his brother.

There's a tragic irony to it, because it's taken so long and so much development on Genly's part to see Estraven as he truly, wholly is. To see him as both man and woman and neither, to both see him as truly alien and fully recognise and appreciate and connect with his humanity (Le Guin uses to mean personhood), to see through the vast differences between them to Estraven's individuality, and love him genuinely. And despite all this, it's Estraven that ultimately fails to see Genly unclouded and love him solely for his individual self, unentangled with the identity of another. At least, not in those last moments where he might have somehow said goodbye. Again, the unfairness of it leaves me bereft and mourning.

As David Mitchell put it and I could not phrase better, "Ursula Le Guin is a chemist of the heart".

[intersexbookclub]

Discussion summary: Left Hand of Darkness

Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic in science fiction that explores issues of sex/gender in an alien-yet-human society where the aliens are just like us except in how they reproduce. These aliens, the Gethenians, can reproduce as either male or female. They spend most of their lives sexually undifferentiated. Once a month, they go into heat (“kemmer”) and their sexual organs activate as either male or female (it’s essentially random).

Here's a summary of the discussions we had on 2023-08-25 and 2023-09-01 about the book:

HIGH LEVEL REACTONS

Michelle (@scifimagpie): even though it was written by a cis straight perisex woman there is a queerness to the writing that feels true and that she nailed. There is a queerness to the soul of this book that still holds up, that's true and good, and I cannot but love and respect that.

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): this book is such a commentary on 1960s misogyny. Genly is a raging misogynist. It takes a whole prison break and crossing the arctic for Genly to realize a woman or androgyne can be competent 👀

Dimitri: [Having read just the first half of the book] I wonder if it keeps happening, if Genly keeps going "woaaaah" [to the Gethenians’ androgyny] or if he ever acclimates. It's been half the novel my guy

vic: yeah a book where a guy is destroyed by seeing a breast makes me want queer theory

vic: [it also] makes me feel good to see how much has changed [since the 1960s]

THE INTERSEX STUFF

A thing we appreciated about the book was how being intersex is contextual. The main character of the book, Genly Ai, is a human from a planet like Earth, who visits Gethen to open trade and diplomatic relations.

On his home planet, and to Earth sensibilities, Genly is perisex - he is able to reproduce at any time of the month and is consistently male.

But on Gethen, Genly becomes intersex. On Gethen, the norm is that you only manifest (and can reproduce as) a given sex during the monthly kemmer (heat/oestrus) period. 

The Gethenians understand Genly as living in “permanent kemmer”, which is described as a common (intersex) condition, and these people are hyper-sexualized and referred to as Perverts.

At this point it’s worth noting that depiction is not the same as endorsement. Michelle pointed out the book is very empathetic to those in permanent kemmer. LeGuin does not appear to be endorsing the social stigma faced by these people, merely depicting it, and putting a mirror to how our own society treats intersex people.

Throughout the book, Genly is treated as an oddity by the Gethenians. He is hyper sexualized. He undergoes a genital inspection to prove he is who he says he is. 

When Genly is sent to a prison camp and forcibly given HRT, he does not respond “normally” to the hormones, the effects are way worse for him, and the prison camp staff don’t care, and keep administering them even if it’ll kill him. 

Two of us have had the experience of having hyperandrogenism and being forced onto birth control as teenager, and relating to the sluggishness of the drugs that Genly experienced, as well as the sense that gender/sex conformity was more important to authority figures (parents, doctors) than actual health and well-being.

Another scene we discussed the one where Genly is in a prison van en route to the gulag, and a Gethenian enters kemmer and wants to mate with him and he declines. He is given multiple opportunities over the course of the book to try having sex with a Gethenian, and declines every time, and we wondered if he avoided it out of trauma of being hyper-sexualized & hyper-medicalized & having had his genitals inspected.

We discussed the way he described his genital inspection through a trauma lens, and how it interacts with toxic masculinity - in vic’s terms, Genly being "I am a manly man and I have don't trauma"

Those of us who read the short story, Coming of Age in Karhide, noted that once the world was narrated from a Gethenian POV, the people in permanent kemmer were treated far more neutrally, which gave us the impression that Genly as an unreliable narrator was injecting some intersexism along with his misogyny

WHY IT MATTERS TO READ THIS BOOK THROUGH AN INTERSEX LENS

Elizabeth: I’ve encountered critiques of this book from perisex trans folks because to them the book is committing biological essentialism, and dismissing the book as a result. I think they’re missing that this book is as much about (inter)sex as it is about gender. I think they’re too quick to dismiss the book as being outdated or having backwards ideas because they’re not appreciating the intersex themes. 

Elizabeth: The intersex themes aren’t exactly subtle, so it kind of stings that I haven’t seen any intersex analyses of this book, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of perisex trans analyses that all miss the huge intersex elephants in the room.

Also Elizabeth: I’ve seen this book show up in lists of intersex books/characters made by perisex people, and I’ve seen Estraven listed as intersex character, and it gets me upset because Estraven isn’t intersex! Estraven is perisex in the society in which he lives. Genly is the intersex character in this story and people who misunderstand intersex as being able to reproduce as male & female (or having quirky genitals smh) are completely missing that being intersex is socially constructed and based on what is considered typical for a given species.

WHAT THE BOOK DOESN’T HANDLE WELL

The body descriptions. As Dmitri put it: “ Like "his butt jiggled and it reminded  me of women" ew. It was intentional but I had to put the book down. It reminded me of transvestigators and how they take pictures of people in public.” 🤮

Not pushing Genly to reflect on how weird he is about other people’s bodies. We all had issues with how Genly is constantly scrutinizing the bodies of other humans to assess their gender(s) and it’s pretty gross.

vic asked: “how much of this is her reproducing violence without her knowing it? A thing I didn't like was how he always judging and analyzing people's bodies and realizing others treat him that way. And I wish there was more of his discomfort about this, that it made him feel icky.”

Dimitri added: “I really wanted him to have a moment of this too, for him to realize how much it sucks to be treated this way. As a trans person it's so uncomfortable. What are you doing going around doing this to people?”

Using male pronouns as default/ungendered pronouns. Élaina asked why Genly thinks a male pronoun is more appropriate for a transcendent God and pointed out there’s a lot to unpack there.

OTHER POSITIVES ABOUT THE BOOK

Genly’s journey towards respecting women, that he still had a ways to go by the end of the book. vic pointed out how “LeGuin was straight, and she loves men, and is kinda giving them the side-eye [in this book]. Her writing about how Genly is childish makes me really happy. It’s kind of hilarious to watch him bang his head against the wall because he’s so rigid.” 

To which Dmitri added: “I agree with the bit on forgiving men for stuff. I don't know how she [LeGuin] does it but she really lays it all out. She gives you a platter of how men are bad at things, how they make mistakes that are pretty specific to them. She has prepared a buffet of it.”

Autistic Estraven! As Michelle put it: “autistic queer feels about Estraven speaking literally and plainly and Genly not getting it”

The truck chapter. Hits like a pile of bricks. We talked about it as a metaphor for the current pandemic.

The Genly x Estraven slowburn queerplatonic relationship

The conlang! Less is more in how it gets used

MIXED REACTIONS

The Foretelling. For some it felt unnecessary and a bit fetishy. For others it was fun paranormal times.

Pacing. Some liked how the book really forces you to really contemplate as you go. Others struggled with a pace that feels very slow to 2023 readers.

WORKS WE COMPARED THE BOOK TO

Star Trek (the original series) - we wondered if LHOD and Genly Ai were progressive by 1960s standards, and TOS came up as a comparison point. We were all of the impression that TOS was progressive for its time but all of us find it pretty misogynist by our standards. The interest in extra-sensory perception (ESP) is something that was a staple of TOS that feels very strange to contemporary viewers and also cropped up in LHOD

Ancillary Justice - for being a book where characters’ genders are all ambiguous but the POV character is actually normal about how they describe other characters’ bodies.

The Deep - for being another book in a situation where being able to reproduce as male and female is the norm. The Deep was written by an actually intersex author, and doesn’t have the cisperisex gaze of scrutinizing every body for sex. But oddly LHOD actually winds up feeling more like a book about intersex people, because it features a character who is the odd one out in a gonosynic society. In contrast, nobody is intersex in the Deep - everybody matches the norms for their species, which makes the intersex themes in the work much more subtle.

Overall, as vic put it, “there's something to be said about an honest depiction that's not great, especially when there's no alternatives”. For a long time there weren’t many other games in town when it came to this sort of book, and even though some things now feel dated, it’s still a valuable read. We’d love to see more intersex reviews & analyses of the book!

[cedarboots]

Scene: it's a beautiful morning, you are the prime minister of Karhide, and the news announcer on the radio is saying something about an alien from outer space

[thosearentcrimes]

Read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. It rules, what else is there to say? Wonderful book on so many levels.

So, the first thing I'll say is that the concept of kemmer ran so omegaverse could crawl. Now, I do not put these into relation purely because they involve the application of concepts of heat/rut to human beings, which would not be a sufficient basis for comparison. Instead, it's that they are both obviously fujoshi-coded. Now, you might wonder, how can kemmer be a fujoshi-coded plot point if it doesn't involve men and is obligately heterosexual? Well, for the former objection, yes it does. They literally all use he/him pronouns lol. There's a whole bit in the book about it (that's obviously a bit outdated with advances in transgenderism, but still holds up). And for the latter objection, it is important to remember that yaoi, especially but not exclusively in the fujoshi subculture, spans a sort of spectrum from "just two guys having sex with each other", through "seme/uke" to "procreative penis in vagina sex in the missionary position" (currently mostly omegaverse, but obviously kemmer falls into it). But of course kemmer is far more interesting conceptually than even the most creative treatment of the omegaverse concept could be.

The worldbuilding is really fun. The way LeGuin allows the reader to sink into an understanding of an authentically alien-feeling world while maintaining enough predictability and familiarity to keep the reader following along is very impressive. I'm not entirely sure what shifgrethor is supposed to be if it's not another word for honor, but the book and its setting is so charming that I treat that as an amusing mystery rather than idle mystification, as I very well might if I were less positively inclined. And similarly for some other elements of the worldbuilding.

I suspect there is a fair deal in the novel to displease conlangers however. There are terms nominally brought in from the Gethenian languages, but it's fairly obvious each term is generated arbitrarily as needed, for spice, even when there is already an equivalent term. Additionally, one feature that is liable to irritate the sort of linguist so impressed with themselves for rejecting both prescriptivism and Chomskyism that they fail to notice they have become as pedantic and rigid as either of those factions tends to get. That is, at one point the novel makes note of the great number of distinct words for snow. Personally I think there's nothing all that wrong with it. To linguists it is a very important matter whether the phenomena invoked are in fact distinct words or not. For everyone else, the point of the factoid, even when it related to specific human groups, was to establish that there were a people who distinguished a very large variety of kinds of snow, which they had established designations for, and that this taxonomy of snow and ice demonstrates an intimate understanding of snow, ice, and related phenomena. These three claims are all true, the precision of the specific statement notwithstanding. And on Gethen, the precision of the specific statement can be assumed, because it says so in the book. That is not to say that a deeper engagement with the referenced factoid wouldn't have helped the book. Notably, I think it is a bit silly that Karhide apparently only has the one language. Given how politically and physically isolated it is, there should be a pile of dialects and arguable distinct languages floating around. But that's a minor quibble.

An interesting, but not particularly bad thing about the book is how heavily the shadow of the Cold War falls on it. Large parts of the book are quite unimaginable outside its context. That the book was published in '69 is hardly surprising. With the benefit of decades of separation from even the Cold War itself, this becomes far more a contextual curiosity than anything else, however. I am excited to see how deranged the present era will seem in the future, if I live that long. It seems plenty deranged already, to be quite honest. Probably did back then too.

I can warmly recommend reading The Left Hand of Darkness. I suppose there are some people who wouldn't like it. It's done in a fairly particular style, and some people might object to the treatment of sex (and gender and sexuality) sufficiently to reject the book entirely. They can if they want to, but I think they're missing out. Very fun book.

[voyagerprobe]

Treasonous Estraven, who broke the incest kemmering taboo, tried to sell out Karhide to foreign aliens & space monsters. No shifgrethor at all! They fled to barbaric Orgoreyn with Cold Alien Ai. Folks, even Orgoreyn saw through it! They're throwing Estraven in the labour camp! GOD BLESS KARHIDE!!

[l3st1b0urn3s-707]

I promised a Birthaday of the world review (because this book was amazing) and here it is!

The birthday of the world and other stories is a collection of short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. All of these stories are about gender rols, and they specially talk about women, and most of them are part of the Hainish Cycle. Let's talk a bit about each of them:

Coming of age in Karhide was probably my favourite one. I might be biased because I love The left hand of darkness and this story is also set in Gethen, but it was trully amazing. It's about how a young Gethenian goes through their first kemmer and loses their virginity. I just love this world so much and the cultures in it, and this is a great story to learn about their society and how sexuality works there.

The matter of Seggri is set in a world where the male population is significally lower that the female, which leads to segregation and a reversion of gender roles. Men are just seen as trophies and only have reproductive purposes. That's it until some Ekumen mobiles arrive to Seggri and everything starts to change. It was so good, it had various points of view and deals with such interesting topics!

Unchosen love and Mountain ways are set in O (same planet as A fisherman of the inland sea, which I have yet to read), where marriages or sedoretu involve 4 people. The first one's about a couple between 2 boys looking for the rest of their sedoretu. One of them, tho, feels a bit trapped in the relationship and doesn't know what to do. The other story's about a sedoretu formed unconventionally. Both of them were so fun, I really enjoyed them and they made me want to know more about O.

Solitude's narrated by the dauhter of a mobile from the Ekumen, who talks about her experience growing up in a world where men and women are separated. I found this one a bit more boring than the previous ones, but it's still really interesting.

Old Music and the slave women was also so good. Old Music's a mobile from the Ekumen living in a planet where slaves have rebelled against their owners. He meets some slave women who are still working for some government officials and tries to protect them and survive through an incoming war.

The birthday of the world wasn't really for me, I didn't like it than much. This one's set in a world ruled by God, which is actually a couple between a man and a woman. The male part is dying, so two of their children will have to marry and become God themselves.

The last one, Paradises Lost, is actually a short novel. It's the only story which isn't part of the Hainish Cycle, and is set on a spaceship traveling through generations to a planet safer than Earth. Some members of the last generation that will live in the ship before its landing will have to deal with the members from a religious group that don't belive the ship's actually going to stop. This one was really interesting. The main characters were really cool, and I loved how the story changed from just showing you the everyday life in the ship to a much bigger conflict. It was great.

So, the book in general was super cool. I really liked how the themes are treated in it, it all just works so well. Some stories were better than the others, but overall they were all really enjoyable. I think that it's really worth reading, even if you haven't read anything by the author or the Ekumen series, because it's simply perfect. I loved it so much!

[estravens-tits]

Le Guin fed us so well with this. You're telling me that Estraven. Unshakeably calm and dignified Estraven. The former prime minister of Karhide. One of the most eloquent and formidable guys on the planet. THAT Estraven is such a fucked up sleeper that every morning in the tent with Genly, he has to flop around for a bit to wake up and then when he finally drags himself to a sitting position, he only has enough presence of mind to stare confusedly at Genly with his stupid half-asleep face? He also sleep talks, going from an earlier passage. Which is all fucking adorable, and it also makes a point about Estraven’s character.

Very few people see Estraven’s true feelings. But every day they travel, Genly sees Estraven not just off-guard but completely out of it. Like you could bounce a penny off his forehead and he wouldn't notice out of it.

And Estraven lets him see. We know Estraven’s discomfort with talking about his past and expressing his feelings directly. It can’t be easy for him to be so vulnerable with Genly. But he does it without ceremony or conversation. Because that’s the kind of trust Estraven has in Genly Ai. He believes so much in the mission and in Genly himself that he would go against his own nature to get Genly across the Ice.

[franky-draws]

Fanart for the scifi story The left Hand of Darkness by Ursula le Guin released in 1969.

The story is my favourite kind of scifi, not an extrapolation of current trends, but an exploration of new concepts. A planet, which population is almost entirely ambisexual. What kind of culture would develop without a fixed sex?

The human male Genly Ai from Terra is sent as an envoy to the winter planet Gethen. While trying to navigate the complex structure of the Gethern society and politics he get close to Estraven, the "prime minister" of the kingdom Karhide. When the paranoid King of Karhide turn on Estraven and charges him with treason, it's not safe in Karhide for Genly anymore as well.

If i had to describe the Gethen: Ambisexial Vikings during an ice age, nordic myths with a touch of taoism

Overall I loved the book, it is very queer, but it is held back by some choices. For example the pronoun used for the Getheners is 'he/him' which made me think of them as male throughout the entire book. Heteronormativity is enforced through the way Getheners reproduce: During heat one turns male, one female. While who turns into what is random, it reinforces our status quo.

[latelylately]

thinking about estravens refusal to sacrifice anyone for the "greater good" aside from himself. his political move to save the lives of farmers that gets him exiled, where he (admittedly, inadvertently) chooses shooting karhide further towards nationalism to save the lives of his countrymen. his rescue of genly despite knowing the ekumen probably expected him to die anyway. maybe this signals his utmost respect for the individual/the person before all else. maybe it was just the result of him being mistakenly short sighted and driven by emotion. much to think about.