#like... you should know why saying 'books by (insert an ethnic group here) authors have ~spiritual healing powers~' is weird!!

[heartshattering]

I need to avoid things online that annoy me :')

[aion-rsa]

11 Diverse Vampire Stories To Read Instead of Midnight Sun

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There’s a very good chance we’re going to read Midnight Sun, the companion novel to pop culture juggernaut Twilight that retells the first story in the Stephanie Meyer YA vampire series from Edward Cullen’s perspective. But we can enjoy something while also being critical of it, and the truth is: our culture deserves more, better vampire stories than what the Twilight saga has to offer. With that in mind, we’ve pooled our collective knowledge to recommend the following vampire stories that have more diverse and imaginative takes on the popular genre. From short stories to book series, hopefully there’s something here for you…

Fledgling by Octavia Butler

A good general rule of life to follow is that if Octavia Butler has written something in a particular genre, you should read it. And that’s as true in the world of vampire fiction as anywhere else. Fledging was the final book Butler published before her untimely death in 2006 and, though it’s technically a vampire story, it’s also a whole lot more than that.

Much in the same way that Butler’s Kindred is a time travel story that tackles physical and psychological horrors of slavery, Fledging is a vampire tale that explores issues of racism and sexuality. In it, a 10-year-old girl with amnesia discovers that she’s not actually a girl at all, but a fifty-something hybrid member of the Ina. Ina are basically what we understand as vampires in this universe – they’re a nocturnal, long-lived species who survive by drinking human blood. They’ve formed something of a symbiotic relationship with the humans they live alongside, using them as a food source in exchange for boosting their immune systems and helping them live (much) longer.

As Shori regains her memories of her former life, Fledging uses her unique situation as an avenue to explore timely issues of bigotry and identity. As a human-Ina hybrid, Shuri has been genetically modified to have dark skin, allowing her to go outside for brief periods during the day, but drawing the ire and distrust of others. As the novel further explores complex issues of family and connection – both the Ina and their human symbionts tend to mate in packs – Butler pokes at Shori’s uniquely uncomfortable position of being the master over one particular group, even as she herself is considered part of something like an underclass within Ina culture. And the end result is something that’s much more than a vampire tale, even as it embraces—and outright parodies—some of its most obvious tropes. 

– Lacy Baugher

Buy Fledgling by Octavia Butler on Amazon

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Twilight’s sin was not in trying to make vampires sexy all over again (it’s OK to make bloodsuckers cool), but rather in amplifying the teenage girl protagonist’s desire while blunting her agency. In doing so, Meyer maintained the dynamic of traditional vampire narratives instead of modernizing it. Five years after Breaking Dawn was released, Holly Black redeemed the YA vampire novel with her standalone tale, set in a world where it’s not just one hormonal teenager who’s dying to be a vampire, but all of society craving that sweet sweet immortality.

In Black’s world, everyone wants to be Cold: infected by a vampire bite but neither killed nor made into a fully-fledged vampire. Not until they drink human blood, at least. But in an effort to control the rising population of vampires and Cold people, the governments created Coldtowns, trapping both in a never-ending party town. The titular Coldest girl is Tana, who wakes up after a (very human, very teenage) rager to find almost everyone slaughtered and herself bitten. Fearing that she has become Cold, she voluntarily turns herself in to the nearest Coldtown along with her also-bitten ex-boyfriend Aidan and Gavriel, a vampire who seeks to take down the uber-vampire who rules the Coldtown.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a sly riff on the vampire obsession that took over pop culture in the early 2000s, yet still its own cautionary tale about chasing after a glamorous, self-destructive afterlife. The cast of characters are fully fleshed-out, from a twin with a fangirl blog to Gavriel as an actually suitable vampire love interest to Tana Bach herself, who gets to be proactive where Bella Swan was always reactive. Best of all, it knows that it doesn’t need to lure readers back to a franchise, like vampires returning again and again to feed, instead telling its entire story in one bloody, chilly gulp.

—Natalie Zutter

Buy The Coldest Girl in Coldtown on Amazon

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, edited by Carmen Maria Machado

A quarter-century before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a different vampire seduced young women away from the suffocating constraints of their lives by awakening within their blood a thrilling, oft-considered perverse, desire. That it is a female vampire—the eponymous Carmilla, known also by her aliases Mircalla and Millarca—likely explains why LeFanu’s text is either incredibly well-known among niche circles, or entirely absent from pop cultural canons. Yet the moment you read it, its depiction of the heady attraction between innocent Laura and possessive Carmilla is anything but subtext.

Like Dracula, this Gothic horror novella is presented as a found text, with a frame narrative of occult detective Dr. Hesselius presenting Laura’s bizarre case… but also to some extent controlling her voice. In her new introduction, Machado posits a startling new contextualization: that Hesselius and Laura’s correspondence is not a fictional device, but a fictionalization of real-life letters between a Doctor Peter Fontenot and Veronika Hausle, about the latter’s charged relationship with the alluring Marcia Marén. That their relationship provided the basis for Laura and Carmilla, but that only the tragic parts were transmuted through the vampire metaphor, excising the queer joy of their partnership, further illustrates how these stories fail their subjects. Yet neither is Marén wholly innocent; as with In the Dream House, Machado does not flinch away from imperfect or even violent queer relationships, such as they resemble any other dynamic between two people.

It’s best to read Machado’s Russian nesting doll narrative without knowing much about her motivations. Though it might be useful to consider how she ends the introduction with something of a confession: “The act of interacting with text—that is to say, of reading—is that of inserting one’s self into what is static and unchanging so that it might pump with fresh blood.” Or try running some of these names through anagram filters.

And if that whets your appetite for other adaptations, the 2014 Carmilla web series both wrestles the frame story back into Laura’s hands, in the form of a video-diary journalism project, and makes the Laura/Carmilla romance very much text.

—Natalie Zutter

Buy Carmilla on Amazon

A Phoenix Must First Burn, edited by Patrice Caldwell

A Phoenix Must First Burn is a collection of sixteen short stories about magic, fantasy, and sci-fi that focus on Black women and gender non-conforming individuals. The book features stories about fantasy creatures of all kinds, witches, shape shifters, and vampires alike. What they have in common is that they are stories about and by Black people, and they offer unique takes on familiar lore.

Bella Swan is a great protagonist in the Twilight series because she is whatever the reader needs her to be. Just distinct enough that you can conjure her in your mind, but mostly a blank slate for the reader to step into the story with her, using her as their avatar. That’s a generality specific to White characters. In A Phoenix Must First Burn, the protagonists are Black. This gives them a very particular point of view, and one that isn’t as common in fantasy, and in the vampire tales of yore.

In Stephenie Meyer’s world vampires look like they’re lathered in Fenty body shimmer when they’re in direct sunlight. In “Letting the Right One In,” Patrice Caldwell gives us a vampire who is a Black girl, with dark brown skin, and coiled hair. Sparkling vampires are certainly a unique spin, but the Cullens are still White and don’t challenge any ideas of what it means to be an immortal blood-drinking creature of the night. A Phoenix Must First Burn shifts the lens to focus on the experience of Black folks, and allows them to be magical, enigmatic, and romantic.

– Nicole Hill

Buy A Phoenix First Must Burn on Amazon

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In the Twilight series, we’re introduced to vampires from other cultures, but they are all very much the same, save for their individual power sets which appear to be unrelated to their ethnicity or nationality. In Certain Dark Things, vampires are a species with several different subspecies and where they come from influences how they look and what kind of powers they have.

Atl is from Mexico and is bird-winged descendent of Blood-drinking Aztecs. The Necros, European vampires, have an entirely different look and set of abilities. Certain Dark Things doesn’t just include vampires from all around the world, it incorporates vampire mythology from all of those places, filling its world with a rich array of distinct vampires with their specific quirks and gifts.

In his four-star review of the book on Goodreads, author Rick Riordan had this to say. “Throwing vampire myths from so many cultures together was right down my alley. If you like vampire books but would appreciate some . . . er, fresh blood . . . this is a fast-paced read that breathes fresh life into the genre.” Riordan, who opened up his literary world to new storytellers and has championed authors of color is certainly a person whose opinion holds weight. Vampires haven’t gone out of style, but the Draculas and Edward Cullens are.

– Nicole Hill

Buy Certain Dark Things on Amazon

Vampires Never Get Old, edited by Zoriada Córdova & Natalie C. Parker

This anthology featuring vampires who lurk on social media just as much as they lurk in the night will hit the bookstore shelves on September 22, just in time to start prepping for Halloween. Edited by Zoriada Córdova and Natalie C. Parker, the collection features eleven new stories and a really fantastic author list, populated with a diverse group of authors from a ton of backgrounds and sexualities. The contributors include V. E. Schwab, known for her “Darker Shade of Magic” series; Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award-winner, Rebecca Roanhorse; Internment author Samira Ahmed; Dhionelle Clayton, author of The Belles and Tiny Pretty Things; “The Blood Journals” author Tessa Gratton (who also contributed to the super spooky looking Edgar Allan Poe-inspired His Hideous Heart); Heidi Heilig, author of the “Shadow Players” trilogy; Julie Murphy, whose book Dumplin’ was adapted for the Netflix film of the same name; Lammy Award winner Mark Oshiro, whose forthcoming YA fantasy Each of Us a Desert will hit stands just before this anthology; Thirteen Doorways author Laura Ruby; and essayist and short story writer Kayla Whaley.

There are a lot of YA authors on this list, many of whom crossover to adult, so there’s a good chance readers will find some of their favorite kinds of angsty vampires on these pages, as well as body-conscious vampires, and vamps coming out as well as going out into the night, seeking for their perfect victim—or just looking for love.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Buy Vampires Never Get Old on Amazon

Choice of the Vampire by Jason Stevan Hill

Back in 2010, when I was first getting to know interactive fiction, Jason Stevan Hill wrote Choice of the Vampire for the still-relatively new company, Choice of Games. A sequel came out in 2013, and this year, the third interactive novel, in which you, the reader make the choices, releases. Best played from a mobile device (although you can play in your browser as well), the interactive novels from Choice of Games are always fun (disclosure: I have written a few), and they’re dedicated to featuring inclusive options to let players express their personalities, gender identities, and sexualities within the confines of the game. Choice of the Vampire starts players as young vampires in 1815 New Orleans. In The Fall of Memphis, the story moves to 1873, and rather than facing the concerns of learning to survive their unlife adventures, players get embroiled in the politics of Memphis, where vampires are electing a new Senator, and the Klan is on the rise. 

With the release of St. Louis, Unreal City, the intention is that the two earlier games will be combined into one larger omnibus, so that players can have an uninterrupted play experience of the full story. St. Louis, Unreal City moves the story forward into 1879, in a St. Louis where the first wave of Chinese immigrants and the dismantling of Reconstruction force the city to face its systemic racism. As workers demand greater rights—and rich financiers attempt to keep control of the nation’s wealth—vampires have to continue to hide, lest they be destroyed. But when one of their own lets loose the beast, causing terror in the streets of America, players have to decide how their character will triumph in a changing world. Stevan Hill pours a ton of historical detail into the scenes he creates, making these vampire stories as much historical fiction as they are fantasy or horror. In advance of the release of the newest installment, the first two games have been updated with new material, so if you’ve played them before, they’re worth a replay before you launch into Night Road!

– Alana Joli Abbott

Moonshine by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Like the first two Choice of the Vampire stories, Moonshine, which came out in 2010, embroils its protagonist in the social struggles of its era: the 1920s of New York City. Zephyr Hollis is an activist, devoted to creating equality for both humans and Others, including vampires, despite her upbringing as the daughter of a demon-hunter. She’s immune to vampire bites, which is helpful when she discovers a newly-turned child vampire; if she turns him in, the authorities will kill him, so soft-hearted Zephyr takes the child in and feeds him her own blood. When she’s approached by a jinn, Amir, to use her cover as a charity worker to undermine a vampire mob boss in exchange for his help with the child, he doesn’t explain what he’s after—but Zephyr’s intrigued enough by the idea (and Amir) that she gets involved. If you already finished Johnson’s newest novel, The Trouble with Saints (also set in historical New York, this one during World War II), returning to this earlier novel and its sequel, Wicked City, will be a fast-paced treat.

Buy Moonshine on Amazon

“A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone

There are not a ton of stories out there about vampire parenting—and fewer that are more about what it means to be a parent, what it means to give up the person you were before (even it that person was a monster). Max Gladstone’s 2014 short story, published at Tor.com, is absolutely a vampire story in the classic sense: a hunt, a victim, a struggle. But it’s also the tale of a vampire, Vlad, who settles down with a vampire hunter, and the changes that settling down create for both of them. How can a parent be honest with his child when he’s hiding something so core to his identity? Even playing baseball in the park requires Vlad to hide his own strength. And how can he work with the teacher to help his son with struggling grades when that teacher is the ideal prey? The idea of being a vampire blends with the idea of hiding an affair, of planning to do something that shouldn’t be done, and then determining whether or not to do it. The way the story is written, it’s hard to tell where it’s going to go, or how two parents hiding so much about themselves can ever be honest with their child—but when it comes to the end, Gladstone knocks it out of the park.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley

The visual of Cleopatra dying with a poisonous asp clutched to her breast is an iconic, Shakespearean-tinged bit of history that we all learned in our ancient Egypt history units. However, Headley’s debut novel gives the queen a bit more credit, by reimagining that instead of going all Romeo and Juliet after the supposed death of her lover Marc Antony, she strikes a bargain with Sekhmet, goddess of death and destruction who has nonetheless begun fading away due to a dearth of worship. In Shakespearean fashion, things go awry when Sekhmet seizes control of Cleopatra, transforming her into an immortal being and transmuting her revenge into a literal bloodlust.

Unable to die, with her lover still slain and her children in danger, Cleopatra must battle the dark force within her urging her to drain others of their lifeforce and let loose Sekhmet’s seven children (plague, famine, drought, flood, earthquake, violence, and madness) upon the ancient world. What’s more, she also has to contend with the mortal threat of recently-appointed emperor Caesar Augustus and the three sorcerers he has rallied to fight the queen-turned-demigod. Drawing from Egyptian mythology to contextualize various familiar vampire tropes (the aforementioned bloodsucking, aversion to sunlight, and weakness for silver), Queen of Kings reinvigorates the vampire mythos through a historical figure who deserved to exist long beyond her mortal lifetime.

—Natalie Zutter

Buy Queen of Kings on Amazon

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

Sir Terry never met a trope he didn’t take the opportunity to parody, but his Discworld take on the vampire mythos is more love bite than going for the jugular. His Magpyrs embody the classic vampires, with all their subgenre trappings, but also are an example of how a supernatural race seeks to evolve beyond its bloody history and try something new. To be clear, these Magpyrs are still in it to drain humans dry, and they’ve developed cunning methods of doing so: a propensity for bright colors over drab blacks, the ability to stay up til noon and survive in direct sunlight, a taste for garlic and wine along with their plasma.

But the clash between the youngest immortals, who seek to overtake the mountain realm of Lancre as their new home, and dutiful servant Igor, who misses “the old wayth” (he’s a traditionalist down to the lisp), reveals a tension familiar to any long-ruling dynasty or established subculture: Change with the times, or adapt but lose what makes you unique? In struggling with this intergenerational dilemma, the Magpyrs find the perfect opponents in Lancre’s coven: Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat, and Agnes—four witches who find themselves taking on different roles within the mother/maiden/crone dynamic as life changes force shifts in their identities. Between these relatable personal conflicts and a hall of vampire portraits that pays homage to Ann Rice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Carpe Jugulum gently ribs the vampire subgenre rather than put a stake through its heart.

—Natalie Zutter

Buy Carpe Jugulum on Amazon

Do you have any vampire story recommendations that challenge the traditional tropes of the genre in interesting and diverse ways? Let us know in the comments below.

The post 11 Diverse Vampire Stories To Read Instead of Midnight Sun appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[janiedean]

Fandom and politics, that's the topic of this message and a request for your opinion on fandom and politics. In recent days in polish fantasy fandom one of the prominent figures, a writer, asked why can't we all just talk and be fandom and leave politics behind, like in "good old days". And explained how he and the wolę fandom just doesn't like ideology pushed at him in media. (1/2)

(2/2) The problem is, what he calls ideology, is often media not being as racist, sexist or homophobic as usually (i.e. the feminist head of the team of writers of The Witcher netflix show, black Heimdall in "Thor" etc.)Or women in fandom demanding to do sth with t-shirts that was sold at one convention, with a print that goes sth along the lines of "I love burning villages and raping virgins". Because those are the prominent scandals of polish fandom.

hmmm the thing is, I think that fandom shouldn’t meddle with politics when it comes to fans period and when it comes to authors, it should but to a certain point. what I mean is:

when I say fandom shouldn’t be meddling with politics when it comes to fans I mean that whole part where you’re judged as SOMETHING just out of your fandom preferences. I mean, people saying you’re homophobic because you don’t ship the slash ship, people assuming you’re racist because you ship two white guys or the likes, people thinking you’re pro-pedophilia because you ship underaged characters and so on. that imo is a thing that regardless of the media in question should die in a fire because you cannot judge people on their fictional preferences. no one should assume I’m okay with incest in general if I ship thor and loki, no one should assume I’m racist because I like stevebucky better than stevesam and no one should assume I’m homophobic if I ship a m/f ship and so on. especially when it comes to people who ship/like problematic stuff for whichever damned reason and they get told they’re monsters when they just wanna do their thing. like that imo is a thing that has to die in a fire right now especially when it becomes a fandom-wide thing and you get people basically going like ‘if you’re white you can’t engage with a fandom with black/poc characters because you’re gonna be racist anyway’ and then complain when they get zero content. or worse, the star wars lists of problematic people that you need to avoid because they ship rey/lo and are therefore *insert problematic word here* and such things. fandom should be a place where fans are free to do whatever they like and explore whatever subjects they like without being judged for it. obviously if someone fucks up MAJORLY (see: the infamous j2 haiti fic of doom) calling them out should happen, also because it means that if they’re ignorant they’ll learn, and using fandom as a platform to learn stuff about people different from your social/ethnical background is always great, but people shouldn’t be shamed for what they do in fandom as a general rule. that is my general opinion when it comes to fans. you can’t go on and judge someone on whether they like noncon in fiction or not. like. no.

what you’re talking about instead is the media itself being more progressive, and in that case I don’t agree with the *good old days* thing because more diversity is good and honestly if someone’s problem is that heimdall is black in a marvel movie that isn’t even accurate per se because in theory thor and loki aren’t even odin’s sons then like, you need to get over yourself.

and like, one thing is having reservation over a shirt such as what you said and another is telling other women they can’t like kink or m/m porn, so like that is a kind of politics that needs to be discussed and absolutely should, but that’s not what I mean when I say I’d really like politics out of fandom space. one thing is fandom space, one thing is the original content. I’m entirely down for diverse original content of whichever kind, what I don’t think should be done is fans engaging with it just looking at the politics and judging it based on the politics only and not on the plot, and mostly judging it on whether it’s progressive enough or not and judging other people for liking it if they don’t think it’s progressive enough, not fans asking for more diverse stuff in general and/or wanting to feel included in fandom spaces, and I think creators should acknowledge that.

like, the polish fantasy writer obviously doesn’t care for diversity - but no one forces him to. but saying that FANTASY IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS WAS JUST WHITE PEOPLE is also ridiculous bc diverse fantasy has been around for ages like ffs.

what I mean is that we absolutely should have politics - if by that you mean more diversity - in the original media we consume, though I don’t think authors should be forced to do that because you get better things when the author actually wants to write them, and fandom should engage with more diverse media absolutely, but fandom can’t also judge what people in it do all the time based on how *they* engage with the content in case, because everyone will like different things and you can’t force people to engage with that specific thing just because you think it’s woke. and you also can’t trash the author for things you might perceive as problematic but actually aren’t.

examples of what I mean: I, author, write a fantasy story.

not so ideal case of politics in media: I, a white cishet female author, decided to write a fantasy story. I don’t know much stuff outside standard fantasy and I don’t feel like writing people who aren’t what I am. I write your usual standard lotr-ripoff, everyone is white, cis and hetero, there’s one romance, a couple bromances, no social or political hidden commentary. it has a good story. it’s an okay book. the fandom most likely will ship the guys in the bromances. no one feels challenged. tumblr declares me problematic for not writing diverse stuff and then ignores me.

ideal case of politics in media: I, a white cishet female author, decided to write a fantasy story. I don’t want to do the same usual lotr rehash and I know that diversity is important and I want to make a good job. I make my character list. I decide who’s white and who’s not, giving a decent balance. I make some of them non-straight. I don’t see many trans characters in fantasy, so I decide one of them is. I spend months talking to anyone belonging to the aforementioned categories asking them what they think of my approach - ie I find a number of trans people to discuss what I want with the trans character, I talk to a number of black people if I want the character to be black possibly not all from the US and I pick people from all over the place. I write my book. I make sure every character has a meaningful relationship with the others so that all their interactions are interesting. I try as much as possible to not have stereotypes. I get a bunch of betas and I change anything they find improvable. my book gets published. everyone loves it.

now, ideal fallout of the above which is what I mean with healthy fandom consumption: I get a fandom made up by diverse people because I have a diverse book. people enjoy that I gave everyone some space. they might interact with me on twitter and asking me ships headcanons. I tell them that they can ship whatever they like write whatever fic off it they want. every character gets some fic or moodboard and everyone enjoys whatever they like in whichever dynamic. not-trans people who had never run into a trans character in fantasy might go like ‘wow I hadn’t realized that’s how it felt’ and might get informed. if I based it on some specific historical period people might get informed on that. people belonging to the minority categories educate the others in fandom about what they might not know, nicely. everyone writes all the porn in the world. everything is great. if someone asks me why I have black/lgbt+/etc people in my book I reply them that minorities exist so why shouldn’t they be in my book and that’s the most twitter hate I get. life is great. my publisher wants more. that book becomes a series. rinse and repeat.

not so ideal fallout, ie what I mean with fandom shouldn’t be about politics: somehow, there’s a fanon ship that gets most fans for a reason. it happens to be idk, bisexual white guy + gay white guy who are not together in the book. they get more fic than dunno, hetero black woman with hetero asian guy. people start calling the first group problematic because they don’t ship the poc couple and THEY’RE RACIST. the trans character isn’t a stereotype/isn’t *good enough* for fandom standards so they decided that idk, feminine straight guy I put in because feminine straight guys exist is actually the only trans one because HEADCANONS and suddenly all fics with a trans character for that book are about the headcanoned character that’s actually a stereotype if you go for that, not the one I actually spent six months researching, and if you don’t agree you’re suddenly a transphobe. someone sends me a twitter message asking me what I think of HEADCANONS and I answer that I’m okay with HCs but I put canon characters that aren’t white, straight and cis for a reason and suddenly I’m THE MOST PROBLEMATIC AUTHOR EVER and people decide that my efforts aren’t good enough and that as a cis woman writing gay men is problematic and everyone in fandom who writes m/m and is a woman is shit. then people decide that shipping the black cis bisexual guy with anyone white is racist and writing porn where he’s on top is racist but then another side says that if he bottoms it’s racist (guys LOOK AT SW FANDOM I DIDN’T MAKE THIS UP), so no one ends up touching the black character out of fear of being dissed. six months after the book is out, the only thing there’s a fandom following for is a problematic as hell crackship in between two cishet white guys that hate each other and barely interacted because it’s the only fandom space where people don’t get shamed for what they like.

I, the author, look at all the hate messages I get on twitter and think fuck it, next time I’m just doing high fidelity 2.0 just with cishet white female protagonists so no one can tell me I did it wrong since I’m white, cishet, female and I hang out in record stores all the damned time or at least I used to when I was younger and they existed. I never write a diverse cast again. I never write a trans character again because that wasn’t what I wanted to do, I just wanted people to have fun and enjoy a more diverse cast of characters without fans murdering each other over it.

like, that’s what I mean with politics shouldn’t be in fandom that much, not that politics shouldn’t be in fandom spaces/in the media we consume period XD ;)

[absynthe--minded]

The problem at the center of the book, ultimately, is that Alex Aster doesn’t understand why tropes work and why certain ideas “hit good”. She seems to be writing entirely based on vibes and vague reminiscence of other, more honest books (which, if you’re considering ACoTaR as a direct ancestor - and you should - means she’s crafted an echo of an echo, as ACoTaR is itself a slick youth-focused imitation of books like the Faefever series or any of the fantasy romances Christine Feehan and Sherrilyn Kenyon have been writing for 20+ years.) Aster spends her time crafting setpieces and scenarios that it’s fun to imagine yourself taking part in, but doesn’t at any point think to build up a solid foundation of worldbuilding or characterization or verisimilitudinous (now there’s a ten dollar word lmao) events and interactions that stand up to scrutiny.

The plot of Lightlark reads like a crossover between Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Hunger Games, the TV show Shadow and Bone, and Beautiful Creatures. Our heroine Isla is the leader of a group of quasi-nudist sex-positive warrior women who have shared ethnic magic (power over nature and power over sex and attraction) and is forced to go represent her people in a once-every-hundred-years deadly game that is meant to end with someone dying. She doesn’t have any magic powers, but hides this with sleight of hand and deception. The end goal of the deadly game is twofold: the winner gets godlike magic powers and if it’s successful the curse over all six races of magic-using humans is broken. This curse has different effects on each nation, so everyone has an interest in breaking it. Isla is bound by her desire to save her people, but struggles with her loyalty to her friend Celeste and her attraction to the shameless Darkling ripoff Grim.

There’s a lot of cool ideas here, some torn from other better books and others wholly invented by the author. The problem is that Aster cannot execute those ideas with any degree of serious competence. She succeeds in creating vivid vignettes and brief interactions, but obviously expects the audience to know immediately how Isla will feel and how she reacts. There’s no work put into any of the relationships, and in particular the flirtation between our protagonist and Grim. Either you immediately accept everything you’re told Isla feels and you completely agree with it and are eagerly inserting yourself into the romance or you’re out in the cold.

Now, sometimes this works - Brahmāstra was a delightful film I saw twice in theaters and it had about as much development of its romance - but usually what sells flimsy stories like this is the sheer chemistry between the two leads. Isla and Grim have none of that, despite having many things in common that could function as the starting point for a genuine connection. Instead, they follow along well-worn ruts for people in their expected tropes, hoping we’re rooting for them.

(and before anyone says anything - I’m aware of the twist, and no, offscreen grooming and assault don’t count as development of a relationship)

I am well into Lightlark and it remains the worst book I’ve read in years that wasn’t literal fascist propaganda, looking at you The Turner Diaries but the thing that is going to compel me about this failure (because don’t get me wrong it is a failure) is that there are these seeds of interesting ideas buried deep within the piles of shit, and I don’t know if Ms. Aster put them there on purpose or if they’re the inevitable byproduct of a diet of better (even only slightly better), more honest, more professionally composed books and fanfiction written by authors with 10+ years of experience.

(I’m reading this because I’m trying to get into a more coherent litcrit mode for my RoP analysis and a lot of the problems with Lightlark are present in RoP (first time project by pretty untested writer coming from a place of privilege, all issues are clunkily handled because it’s the first time they’ve ever written about them, a lot of hype and early positive buzz + ludicrous financial success that burns out quickly when the final product is revealed to be mediocre, an audience of people who like it anyway); regardless, the project on its own is utterly fascinating.)

[daaberlicious]

The “Because We Need One” Problem

I'm probably not nearly popular enough online for people to start caring about my opinion, yet I've felt the urge before to give it and hear what people have to say about it anyway.

I've been stewing with this topic for a while now, so I've got a lot to say. In the interest of not cluttering your dashboard, you can go ahead and click “Keep reading” when you feel like you have the time instead of being immediately confronted with a wall of text.

Now what is the “because we need one” problem, anyway? It's a little awkward to say, and you have no idea whether I'm referring to reality or fiction.

In this case, I'm referring to fiction, but while this could also apply to the modern USA in many organizations, that's another entire topic I do not feel comfortable with approaching.

To put it simply, the “because we need one” problem is the tendency for authors and creators to insert a minority of some sort, be they racial, sexual, gendered or demographic for the vague reasoning of “because good works must have them”. Now, I do not claim to know of exact dates in which psychological trends start, but I do notice how psychological trends work, so you probably would know what I'm talking about-

“This film's too white. Let's add someone African American into the main cast to make it better.”

“This TV series is too masculine. Let's put a woman into the main cast.”

“This webcomic is too straight. I'm going to put an LGBT character into it to make it better.”

This is a problem because this kind of thought relies on a completely false premise:

If my cast is more racially/ethnically/orientationally/sexually/demographically diverse, then they will be better, more interesting characters.

Personally, I first noticed this was a problem in my somewhat younger teenage years when I had first discovered webcomics. People were telling very deep stories with sprawling arcs, unusual settings and premises and diverse casts... Specifically, there was always at least one LGBT character in it.

Going on a bit of a relevant tangent:

Being a Christian having grown up around other Christians, the sudden exposure to this as a thing that exists and that people were obsessed about was very jarring. I struggled with the morality of such behaviors as displayed in these characters only, to my dismay with Christian doctrine and utter offense towards others who either did not agree with how I interpreted it or reject me for holding such beliefs in the first place, to find that the biblical text was awfully clear.

It does not get much clearer than 1st Corinthians 6:9-10.

Still, I will admit that I was making a big mistake with my attitude towards these truths. Nothing visible to others, but plainly visible to me. If I was following something for a while and they suddenly introduced or even hinted at until introducing an LGBT character, I found myself not following that thing anymore, not realizing my hypocrisy: If a character were to have sexual relations outside of marriage, something that is equally rejected Biblically as with all forms of sin, I would not give it the same discredit and call it “not worth my time”, even though the idea earns no more points in my favor than various LGBT behavior.

Going back to 1st Corinthians 6:9-10, there are a wide variety of sins listed in that passage that claim those who do them will not inherit The Kingdom of God (without, as the rest of The Bible says, a complete transformation of heart and sincere, honest attempt to totally cease such sinful acts).

But now that I'm older and wiser, though I can see my attitude was not a good one to have- That of discrediting a story solely because of what I viewed as the bad behavior of its main characters- I can see why I was really so offended by this: Every single one of these works of fiction that I rejected did not include an LGBT character because it was an incidental, not very important part of their character, as would be the case with the titular protagonist of Poppy O'Possum or as I suspect would be the case with certain characters in Tamberlane, but all because the author decided that they required one to make the story better.

The “because we need one” problem.

So get on with it, Daab. Why is it a problem?

Let me illustrate why it is by giving you some examples of stories that didn't harbor the “because we need one” attitude:

First off is The Lord of The Rings.

Think about it. Do you see a single person of African American decent in Middle Earth? I don't know for certain about the books, as while I am somewhat well read, I have not attempted to conquer the behemoth that is J R R Tolkien's original works, but I can say with enough certainty that I did not see a single African American among the entire medieval setting. They may have been present in the movies, but I did not notice them.

And you know what? That wasn't a problem. For one thing, a traditional medieval setting wouldn't have such people not because they were necessarily ostracized if they were even heard of, but because it wasn't the right part of the world to have them.

In the medieval times, African Americans were just Africans. Plain and simple. They lived out their lives in the African countries and Europeans lived out their lives in the European countries. In designing a setting, one must consider the kinds of people within it and have a good reason for why, not worry about diversity-

If you have a good enough reason, even something as simple as “I don't know how to write for/draw them”, or “It doesn't fit the tone of the story”, or heaven forbid, “I simply don't need this group of people in my setting to make it work”, nobody of sound mind is going to complain... And I see very few people complaining in seriousness about The Lord of The Rings not including African Americans.

For another, skin color doesn't matter when there are such gems of character such as these. If you write your characters well, you will come up with moments in your story and lines of dialogue that people don't just relate to or sympathize with, but empathize with and really feel.

Contrast that point about demographics with Dreamworks' Home.

Home prominently features an African American as one of the main characters, so one would think that I'd be saying it's an instance of “because we need one”, but it's actually not.

I don't think of Tip as African American first. She's a young, perhaps tween-age lonely girl that got separated from her family due to an extraterrestrial misunderstanding and harbors a resentment towards these same aliens. Then she's African American. It's incidental and not at all significant to her character.

She was not inserted into the story as African American because it would be a more diverse cast. Heck, she's pretty much one of only two significant human characters in the story, the other being her mother, who would obviously be the same race as her if she were not adopted.

She was inserted into the story as African American as only an incidental design choice, and it's only an incidental part of her appearance to the audience.

Yet people praise it for having an African American main character and saying how much it helps the cause of diversity in media when it shouldn't even be noteworthy! Praise the story instead for it's thoughtful commentary on loss, anger, sadness and love! Praise it for it's understanding of the tragedy of misunderstanding and on how both sides suffer when they fail to understand the other!

See where I'm going here?

Finally, let's take a look at one of my favorite webcomics, Freefall.

Freefall is a playful yet insightful distant future science-fiction webcomic featuring a cast that is not just racially diverse, but also includes robots, some organic artificial intelligences, and even a singular alien, as well as its own culture and plenty of references to other cultures including our current cultural trends.

Yet George Peterson has made it clear through his writing that Freefall doesn't give a crap what race, gender, or even species its characters are. Yes, some of those things are addressed though pretty much always as a thought experiment, and a major arc is dedicated to AI rights on the small colony of Jean, but nowhere does it shout to the heavens “LOOK AT THIS STORY! IT'S SO DIVERSE IT'S EVEN GOT AN INTERSEX ROBOT!”

Instead, it looks at all these various components of diversity through the lens of what it means to be an intelligent creature (or robot, as the case may be), and never once switches out of this lens.

Freefall is all the better for it. It playfully acknowledges people's quirks, vices and virtues, explores the happy, sad, and strange components of the thinking brain, and when the story gets serious, it can even make you empathize with and root for its character Florence as though she were just another person, despite the fact that she's a wolf given human capabilities and a human level of thought.

This is because every character is what they are incidentally, and anything arising from that, either dialogue, story elements or entire arcs, also feels incidental despite its importance to the story.

Ultimately, the “because we need one” problem is a problem because it fails to make diversity or lack thereof incidental. It puts way more importance on skin-color, gender, sexuality and demographic than any American/European/Swede/whatever or any child of God should. And by putting the “diverse” genders, races, sexual orientations, demographics and citizens of other countries on such a pedestal, you are letting all else of those same characters just die.

If you make your character's most important trait be that he is gay, then that is the only thing he will be. It won't matter to me if he goes to Starbucks every day after work because it's the one place he can relax after working under a boss that's mean to everyone because of how much you want to tell me he's gay.

If you make their most important trait be that they are black, Hispanic, Jewish, or Asian, that is all they will be. It won't matter how loyal they are to their best friend, the protagonist, because all you're showing me is that they are black.

If her most important trait is that she is french, she's only going to be french in the eyes of your reader. I won't care about the tragedy she experienced when she was three if all you're showing me is she's french.

Religious diversity isn't off the hook either. If they are first Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Celtic or Atheist, your reader will only see those things. I won't care what they do for fun because you're throwing their Scientology in my face and expecting me to complement you for your deep writing.

Deep writing does not require diversity, nor does it punish it's presence. Diversity, or lack thereof, should sit at the bottom of the character you're building as a foundation that is firm.

Nobody looks at what the ground is composed of unless they're actually doing something with it.

Seriously, do you expect an architect to make such grand emphasis on how his ground is composed of hardened earth? What about soft sand? Rocky soil?

Absolutely not! He wants you to look at what he's put there, and like any building, its supports , groundings and foundation all the way up to its roof will will be influenced by the soil he chooses to build on, but in the case of the greatest architects, it's never made of that soil! It's made of wood or stone, steel or concrete, glass or ice.

Likewise, when you write a character, what you will love the most about them is what makes them cry or laugh, get angry or give up, strengthens them or gives them hope. You will pour your love into what kind of things they do for fun and what kind of things they do to get by, their history and their future, their life and sometimes even their death. You will want your readers to like their quirks, pity their vices and applaud their virtues.

You must never expect your readers to look at the earth you build on and love that your character is gender-fluid, or demi-girl or demi-boy, or Arab or Native American, or Christian or Jewish or Muslim, or even that they're alien, or animal, or mythical creature or species.

This is very hard to accept, as we are creatures that recognize what is superficial first. It is what initially draws us in or pushes us away. But just like we can't expect a long relationship with someone just because they're handicapped, we can't expect someone to stay with our creation just because our characters are twins.

When you compose a story, or make a movie, or write a novel, put people where you need people, not demographics.

After all, the stories that really matter are about people.