#melanie rawn

[sixth-light]

I've been thinking a lot lately* about how artistic works are so intimately products of their moment and in conversation with it, and how easy this is to overlook both in terms of discussing a work and in terms of anticipating or considering new additions to an older work.

The first is important because so many judgements that can be made about a work are only meaningful when you know what their context was. What readers need or want to see, particularly in terms of representation, is hugely mediated by what else is available to them at the time. Yeah this is about stuff like "Rocky Horror was progressive when it was created" but also it's about stuff like "the John Carter movie bombed because it was regarded as derivative", when in fact the source material originated a bunch of the 'derivative' scenes and tropes that were then used by better-known movies before a John Carter movie ever got made.

The second is important because...even if you come back to a work, as a creator, you can only make new parts of it as the person you are now, in conversation with the world and genre as it is now, not as it was when you started. Taking a mildly-infamous-among-fantasy-fans example, Melanie Rawn's unfinished Ambrai trilogy; she's often said that she can't finish it because her life has moved on and...as sad as I am it was never finished, I think that's probably smart! She could write a third book one day, maybe, but it never could or would be the third book she would have written in the 1990s. And even if she did manage that somehow, the genre has moved on in such a way that it would feel weird and probably quite offputting to read a book doing with gender and feminism what the Ambrai books were doing in the '90s, because they are/were inherently in conversation with an era of fantasy that is now past.

All of which is to say that:

as a reader (or watcher) I think it's good to hold in mind, when engaging with a work from a time and/or place unfamiliar to you, the extent of what you don't know about the context of the work

as a creator, I think it's good to be very realistic about what you're going to actually achieve when you are making something over a long time period or coming back to something you left unfinished. You can totally do that! It can be incredibly rewarding! But the thing you make now is not the thing you would have made then, probably not even the thing you imagined you were going to make then, and that's just the nature of art.

*The reason I have been thinking about this is partly books I have been reading (Mara of the Acoma, you are my blorbo) and partly a very fun podcast I have been listening to which has re-read The Ruins of Ambrai and done a lot of discussion about its context, finishing up with a great interview with Kate Elliott about writing fantasy in the '90s (and writing it now, as she is still writing great but different books!). Anyway go listen to the Hot Nuance Book Club, it's a good time.

[kvalenagle]

I was searching the upstairs closet for a lightbulb and I came across what is basically the "lgbtqia+ Millennial who likes to read starter pack." Gotta say, I didn't realize I still had any Silver Gryphon t-shirts left. Takes me back to being a teenager =]

[bylightofdawn]

God damn, I got to thinking tonight about two books I've been legitimately waiting to get published since the late 90's.

First was Strange Fate which is the last book of LJ Smith's Nightworld series. She's known for her Vampire Diaries series which got made into a couple of shows which I never watched because i never really cared for the books. But fuck me I've been waiting since 1998 for this book to be published.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS I HAVE BEEN WAITING

And the other one, (the one that really cuts more deeply) is the Captal's Tower by Melanie Rawn. That's been since 1999.

And I'm looking online, hoping to find updates and the amount of bitching, wailing and generally entitled attitude of fans everywhere on say goodreads and Amazon is kinda...gross. Yes, I'm frustrated, yes I get frustrated every time they put out a book for a different series but you know what is NOT going to make them write faster?

Grown-ass adults throwing tantrums and generally acting like children decrying the author for being 'cruel' and depriving them of THEIR conclusion of the series. Uhhhh ya'll do know it's their book right?

I mean I've been through the entire cycle when it comes to these books and I'm sure when I was younger I prolly had similar opinions but I didn't post them online and now I look at this behavior and I just shake my head.

NGL a salty part of me that knows LJ Smith has been employing ghostwriters for years just wishes she'd give it over to a ghostwriter so we could get some conclusion. But eh it is what it is.

As for Melanie Rawn? I've kinda accepted that this series will never be completed and it hurts because it had such a huge impact on me growing up. It's very much fantasy Star Wars inspired in a lot of ways. LOL Which is prolly why I liked them as much as I did.

But you're not gonna see me throwing a hissy fit online and generally being a self-entitled twat about it.

I also get a little ironic schadenfreude every time someone complains about how long it takes GRRM to write his GoT book.

[obscuredilfoff]

Propaganda below the cut!

Ostvel

#1 dilf of my heart more people need to appreciate him

Mr. Bombolony

principal of his sons school. number 1 embarrassing dad

[roseunspindle]

March 2023 TBR

[first-and-last-neocount]

Okay I swear I'm not looking to start yet another Coldfire AU but I'm a couple chapters into Dragon Prince and just got reminded that faradh'im all get violently and incapacitatingly seasick anytime they're over water, and I cannot stop giggling because can you imagine Damien getting reincarnated in this world. He doesn't have to worry about the fae or volcanic activity anymore but he's got That to deal with.

[gwydionmisha]

If you have any last Lucian's library suggestions, I'd love them.

Lucian's Library 6

Feel free to suggest never written books you wish you could read.

Some items suggested by impatient readers for still living authors.

[roostercrowned]

I'm almost done with the first book of the Dragon Prince trilogy by Melanie Rawn (which I'd been curious about FOR DECADES because one of the covers features a favorite Michael Whelan painting that I had in tasseled bookmark form as a kid) and I'm having some Same Hat moments with RotE

WE GOT 1. magic that involves psychic communication over long distances 2. Fantasy Drugs 3. Evil Seduction Scene that ends in attempted throttling 4. out of control breeding kink stuff in the guise of royal succession plotting 5. enjoyable supporting characters (I really like Tobin and Chay) 6. stronger-than-expected sense of character interiority for the time and genre (Hobb is still the best but I've been pleasantly surprised here) I didn't care for the protagonists much at first but now that she's really put them through the blender I'm like yes! yes!! Sweet suffering! Writhe, children!!!!!

[ghostoftheyear]

going through some super old art and found this lineart I did of an OC from 2004, was just going to color it in for finality but instead I re-inked her because I wanted her face to be cuter. wip.

if anyone remembers the Dragon Star books by Melanie Rawn, Jezhrai here was a first-ring sunrunner in a forum-type RP on *Prodigy (jesus I'm old), sweet and innocent and young. I also recycled her for CrystalMUSH, where she was more mature but still cute as a button. I'm still sad I lost most of my RP logs from that (and everything from *Prodigy).

[dangermousie]

On "upscaling" of covers ie why are we so boring now?

So, my recent desire to reread some Robin Hood retellings I used to love led me to Jennifer Roberson's Lady of the Forest. Roberson wrote a LOT of fantasy (Tiger and Del series is amazing) but she also wrote period novels now and then, and LotF is a historical take on the Robin Hood legend with focus on Marian.

I adored that novel back when I first read it many years ago and every time I've reread it since. My paperback copy is somewhere it's a pain to get to and is probably falling apart, so I went on amazon to get a kindle edition. It's there, I own it, yay but it also made me discover the new cover for it.

This is the original cover. This is the edition I first read as a young Mousie back in the 1990s:

And this is the current cover:

Notice the difference?

The first cover would definitely make me pause and check the book out a bit in a book store. It has a gorgeous old tale vibe that actually does convey a lot - it's heavy on romance (which it is), it has our protagonists (no wonder it's one of my favorite versions - I am a total sucker for blond with PTSD MLs.) The new cover is so depersonalized and generic I'd never pause twice.

This cover, like so many others, has gone respectable. No pretty people (no people at all), no romance no nothing. Some medieval weapon or two, a bland pattern and color. WHY?

The first cover you may like or not but it conveys a story! It catches attention. The second I wouldn't even pause in front of.

I know that romance novels have (sadly) moved from those gonzo covers with shirtless dudes clutching busty ladies but this is not even that. This is just boring.

Two corollaries.

One: I miss 1990s fascination with blond dudes holding their OTPs. Here is Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince (a delightful old school fantasy read I totally recommend.)

Two: I can't say I get the romance novel cover switch either. This is the old cover for Justine Davis' Lord of the Storm:

This is the new cover:

It's not any less eye popping but it's kinda odd to leave off the heroine (though as someone who's read this novel more than once (it hits some VERY specific kinks; if you read it you know which ones. This is my judgment free zone :P) I am still not sure where she was clutching the dude's leg while wearing a nightie and 1980s hair.)

There are some amazing relatively recent covers that fight the bland and photoshop:

I mean look at this beauty! I checked out this trilogy because of that cover! It's just as gloriously pulpy as the cover promises (side note if you like fucked up x fucked up battle couple, dude finding meaning of life and learning to trust because of one deadly woman, and hot blond guys with supernatural powers and hot dark haired ladies with a huge kill count, boy do I have a series for you.)

Anyway, I don't even know where this is going any more except you should read all the novels I mentioned.

[drconstellation]

Oh my sweet summer children. I've endured longer waits than this, and harder fictional hits.

A part of dealing with grief is accepting change. This was a change that had to happen for the greater good of their relationship. It will get easier. At least we are promised a happy ending.

so good omens fandom.

how.

how we doing.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Worldbuilding: !@#$ the terfs, be more creative with gender and bio sex than a binary system.

9.5 times out of ten the majority of gender systems I read in US books are really, really uncreative, and I do mean that because manga, has more creative gender systems than a lot of US books. I love you Melanie Rawn, but still, the inversion as good as it was in the uncompleted Ruins of Ambrai, still was largely a European system because it was largely a commentary on the European system. (Yes, I did understand that.)

And the US tends to, very much accuse other countries of having uncreative gender systems that are absolutely rigid, say the US to Japan. (Though the usually [white] understanding of Japanese gender is usually abysmal... but that's a whole paper and a half there.)

When building a gender system, be more creative! You have this other fake culture. You can do whatever the heck you feel like. Say, the Barbie Movie, which hilariously the alt-right USian detested, though it still was a commentary on mostly US gender norms.

Can't we loosen this up a little? You have literal aliens and you can't imagine a more creative sex and gender system than the binary? Oh really? Humans aren't even binary on either. I'm going to give cultural examples.

Introduction

Bugis have 5 genders.

BTW, someone got so mad when I pointed out the page they cited said that Bugis recognized 5 genders, they went on a youtube rant about it. lol Deal. BTW, people put a lot of emphasis on Bissu like how people hyperfocus on trans women in the US because masculinity is that fragile. Albanian is complicated.

Some countries/ethnicities have 3.

India has a 3 gender system in Northern India. Women, men, Hijra

I mean this list:

Some countries don’t even define the two gender system the same way (Europeans are sooo uptight. Loosen up.)

For example, a Korean man wearing pink--no problem. No one flips the hell out when a man in Korea wears a hanbok with a chima and a jeogori. They are like cool. He can do as he likes. Even baksu wear chima in religious ceremonies. They believe it gives them extra powers.

The whole pants. are. for. men. and. women. only. wear. skirts.

Oh c'mon...

Pants were invented for horseback riding--like the heel.

So let's get this mind-numbingly straight (pun somewhat intended here) Men, are men because of horses. (haha, yes, Barbie reference), thus have to wear pants. But are absolutely effing forbidden from wearing heels, which are also associated with what? Horseback riding. Hmmm...

And men still wear dresses and skirts, but they call it by other names.

Judicial robes for sale, and look, a man is wearing them.

But--But that's soo different from a dress...

https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-jp/shop/product/la-doublej/clothing/maxi-dresses/muumuu-printed-silk-twill-maxi-dress/38063312420399795

This is a dress because as Webster's Dictionary says:

: an outer garment (as for a woman or girl) usually consisting of a one-piece bodice and skirt

Yes, it's worn by a woman. I couldn't find another definition.

But men also wear sarongs. And bath towels, and kilts all of which look suspiciously like skirts. And togas. Which shows how fragile the definition is that you need to narrow the definition that much.

And freaking for those religious, God on the Sistine Chapel, by suspected maybe gay Michelangelo, has a vaccuum sealed butt on the Sistine chapel wearing a pink dress.

C'mon, we can be more creative than this, surely. I mean, if you look at this super rigid gender system, does it make any sense at all? OK, I'm NB and all, but seriously, I look at it and go, WTF happened to you?

You get so uptight about men wearing lace, stocking, high heels, dresses, pink but forget so quickly that less than 200 years ago, no one gave a damn, and if a man didn't wear those things, he couldn't make it in high society.

I mean...

Lafayette, wearing pink, heels, stockings, lace (his collar), and a wig. Give me a break here.

And gender definitions change over time...

Just about 100 years back, in order to be out and gay, it was thought your entire gender was different. There was nothing like a butch gay man. You were considered part female, in fact. And no one in the 19th century would have taken exception to that. It didn't change until much later in Europe.

But also Europe imperialized the world with gender expectations, leading to a rise of violence against third gender communities.

What was one of the first three rules of culture I posted? Culture changes. Koreans like to say, even in ten years the Mountains and rivers change. So gender can and will also change in definitions becoming more rigid, more fluid, recategorized, etc over time.

So given all of these things... let's rethink gender.

Gender doesn't have to be Defined by Sex Assigned at Birth

A lot of Human cultures assign gender this way. Born one way, raise them that way, hope it works out.

But you have a whole FANTASY WORLD and you can see, humans don't make a lot of logical sense when it comes to gender. I mean heels are for women, and men should never wear them, except when they are attached to boots, but the boots better not be too high , or you're *gasp* gay is the European "logic" system. And only what? 50 or so years ago, women were finally allowed to wear pants.

So you don't have to do it by genitals. You could do it by hair color. Gender affirming care would be changing your hair color, or horns, or whatever tickles your fancy. You could, say have a cephlapod species with smaller males that can present female part of the time, and based on their texture of their skin, that's their gender.

You could do it by color--the species has actually blue, dark blue, green, yellow, etc skin colors and they can change them at any moment and the one they tend towards, well, that's their gender.

You could also make it so you automatically need a polycule for the species to work out and reproduce. And thus there might be, say a 6 gender system. 2 possible genders for the three adults there.

C'mon. Nature is creative and sometimes has an all female species. Look at Mourning geckos. There are so few males, and they are sometimes called a lesbian species of gecko.

Even then, you have intersex, and not all intersex people are infertile.

Terfs only think it's wrong to "go against nature" when it has to do with gender presentation. Nothing else. But they have no, no problem with assigning a sex to an intersex child without their consent. That's culture taking over for nature. And how that is shaped, or not shaped, absolutely belongs in world building.

If your men aren't horseback riding, and your women aren't either, then dresses for all are fine. Deal with it.

I think it would be entertaining to see an alien species determine the gender of the child by holding up paint swatches to the child's say eyes and then saying, "Yep, a girl."

Or even well, the birther stayed in # temp rooms, for # amount of days, Oh, this is the expected sex of the child. But the gender, well, we will determine that by these [arbitrary] factors.

But seriously, you can define gender and sex however, you want. Is medical/magic intervention necessary or not? Who gets to determine it?

Next step is to find the rules for how gender is expressed in an idealized world.

Do you constantly call all of your girls and tell them they can grow up to be a princess? But tell all your boys they are going to grow up to be doctors and lawyers?

This is what Social Scientists would call socialization.

For this, I would suggest you make a spreadsheet and then put down arbitrary lists of things the "ideal" gender would wear. So for the US, Pink is for girls. Blue is for boys. How they should act. And finally, how they are taught.

It's so ubiquitous that even feminists often trip up and see a baby in a pink dress with lace and automatically pick up a doll. (I'm just saying, maybe think that one over a bit.)

Make a list for each column. And then for the individual characters figure out how they DON'T fit those norms and then terrorize them with it...

What do you threaten the privileged group with if they come out of line?

For men in the US, for example, you go with homophobia. "That's gay."

Because the threat of being gay is sooo outlandish. *eyeroll* It's an threat to everything masculine.

I'll go over this in more detail later in the series, but you need things to discipline the privileged group and the disadvantage group(s). What's the threat if you become this other group? Death? Social ridicule? Financial loss? Being outcast?

Or, do you get rewarded and become a shaman, a healer, or a celebrated hero for being able to not fit in? (This also is possible).

Cultural justifications

Cultural justifications for this are different from the actual historical reasons or the facts.

The historical reason that pink and blue switched was because dyes became more readily available for both and they felt like it.

Blue used to be more rare, and thus considered "virginal" because blue is rare in nature, but under industrialization as people became more and more disconnected from nature, and blue dyes became available, the idea of this became more diluted, and the switch was from blue to pink.

That's not what the cultural justifications were for this thought originally. The thought was that blue was a more "delicate" color, clearly more suited to women.

Because, if you have forgotten (yes a joke coming), humans constantly get amnesia on where things come from. Constantly. We've lost information in your own lifetime. You were born 2 seconds ago? Well, I hate to tell you, we've lost information in that 2 seconds.

So, when they can't remember the reason, Humans make up a reason to go with it, that's often frivolous and silly. Something that feels, what? Natural to them. Though remember the rule, Nature gives no fucks. So find and make up a logical reason for the cultural item and then find a stupid reason that people are willing to double down on it and there you go, that's culture. So say your species of aliens, the ones that are temperature linked to sex, link Iunno, gender to horn size. Bigger horns mean a certain class of gender. The original reason might be that bigger horned females are better at digging nests back when they were a pastoral society, thus better able to have larger clutches of children. But they've now reached the stars, so they completely forgot why and now just say that bigger horns are simply sexier because reasons. Or it could have flipped that smaller horns are in more demand, because big horns get in the way of industrial tasks, but no one says that. And now the bigger horned females, are considered a lower gender than the smaller horned females, who then raise all of the eggs.

See, the justification doesn't even have to follow any sort of logic. It's what they tell everyone to make them feel better.

And truthfully, a lot of culture is built this way. The reason you tell everyone isn't really the actual truth. I mean I did a whole series on Story Structure, and the justifications versus the reasons why it was made that way don't even close to match. People blindly parrot what other people tell them if it will help them succeed. (BTW, not saying I'm not guilty of this, I absolutely am.)

So I think this gives you a good basis to free yourself up for a larger system and be more creative with your gender definitions. Because absolutely both gender and sex are defined by culture, but in different ways.

You have effing demons, and you can come up with a more creative gender categories? You have unicorns and you don't have more creative gender categories. And you have kracken climbing buildings, but you can't imagine a third sex category for them when it absolutely exists in nature. C'mon. Hit me with your most creative and free yourself of your own culture's definitions of gender.

What if you nuked the entire Male/female/NB system. What would that look like? How would you justify it on two fronts? Blow that system out of the water and rework it. What would the Sexual orientation work like with a 3 sexes, 2 gender for each each system?

What stupid prohibitions would you put in for such a system?

[obscuredilfoff]

Propaganda below the cut!

Ostvel

#1 dilf of my heart more people need to appreciate him

Sesshu Akisato

No propaganda was submitted for this character.

[barkingbonzo]

Michael Whelan Cover Art, The Cosmic Computer

Michael Whelan (born June 29, 1950) is an American artist of imaginative realism. For more than 30 years, he worked as an illustrator, specializing in science fiction and fantasy cover art. Since the mid-1990s, he has pursued a fine art career, selling non-commissioned paintings through galleries in the United States and through his website.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted Whelan in June 2009, the first living artist so honored. According to his Hall of Fame citation.

Michael Whelan is one of the most important contemporary science fiction and fantasy artists, and certainly the most popular. His work was a dominant force in the transition of genre book covers away from the surrealism introduced in the 1950s and 1960s back to realism.

His paintings have appeared on the covers of more than 350 books and magazines, including many Stephen King novels, most of the Del Rey editions of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, the Del Rey edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series, Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince and Dragon Star series, the Del Rey editions of H. P. Lovecraft's short story collections, the Grand Master edition of Ray Bradbury's fix-up novel The Martian Chronicles, DAW editions of Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné books, numerous DAW editions of C. J. Cherryh's work, many of Robert A. Heinlein's novels including Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, the Ace editions of H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy novels, and Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Otherland, and Shadowmarch series and Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive. Whelan provided covers and interior illustrations for Stephen King's The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower, the first and last of his Dark Tower books.

Cover art by Michael Whelan has graced many music record albums including Demolition Hammer's Epidemic of Violence, The Jacksons' Victory; Sepultura's Beneath the Remains, Arise, Chaos A.D. and Roots; Soulfly's Dark Ages; Obituary's Cause of Death; and every album by the Elric-influenced metal band Cirith Ungol. He painted original works for the covers of Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell and The Very Best of Meat Loaf albums and several of his older paintings illustrate the liner notes of the former. In 2009, he painted the cover art for thrash metal band Evile's album Infected Nations.

[first-and-last-neocount]

I think I have New Material Burnout.

I haven't produced any meaningful writing in weeks and I haven't managed to finish several books and shows I've picked up, and I think my brain just wants something familiar. In an attempt to change tack and get out of this mental sinkhole that I appear to have found myself in, I've decided it's time for a reread of Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince/Dragon Star trilogies, which I will be starting later today.

I'm going to be tagging any posts about the books with Sunrunner Saga as a catch-all for the two trilogies as well, so if anyone gets sick of my rambling then that's the tag to block, lol

[breelandwalker]

Mama Bree, this is a weird thing to ask but: can you recommend any good fiction about witches and sorcerers? I've read LOTR and The Silmarillion but I'd like to branch out, maybe try something more modern, and I wondered if you had any faves.

I gotchu, fam. 😁

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia C. Wrede)

The Codex Alera (Jim Butcher)

The Harry Dresden Series (Jim Butcher)

The Practical Magic Series (Alice Hoffman)

The Abhorsen Series (Garth Nix)

A Nameless Witch (A. Lee Martinez)

Uprooted (Naomi Novik)

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik)

Sebastian (Anne Bishop)

Belladonna (Anne Bishop)

Toil and Trouble: 15 Tales of Women and Witchcraft

Wicked Witches: An Anthology of New England Horror Writers

If you want something more along the lines of a solid brick of high fantasy, I might also recommend The Ruins of Ambrai / The Mageborn Traitor by Melanie Rawn (if you don't mind that she's never going to finish the damn trilogy) or her Dragon Prince series (it was written in the 1980s and it shows, but it's very entertaining).

There's also a particular subset of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series that focuses on a group of absolutely wonderful witches. I recommend starting with Equal Rites (Granny Weatherwax et al) and The Wee Free Men (Tiffany Aching) and going from there.

Happy Reading!