September 12, 2012

Dungeons and dragons, armour and underwear

Filed under: links,things I read on the internet,things Rhiannon does not like — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 11:43 am

Image from WitchbladeRoleplaying games (RPGs) are one of the most popular ways to experiment with your own stories. Unlike most computer games they are designed to be customisable. You can choose your character, your race, your skills, your weapons and your future. Playing in a group of people with a games master (GM) your characters explore a fantasy world.

But unfortunately for girls and women the fantasy worlds of roleplaying seem to share some of the worst characteristics of this one. This fantasy space is a male fantasy in which the men are armoured and the women go to battle in their underwear. For people of colour fantasy worlds are even more problematic. The glamourous “good” races like elves are typically described as whitefolk and it’s ugly conniving “bad” races like orcs and goblins who have skin tones of darker hues.

What’s worse is that many female roleplayers think there’s nothing wrong with this. One woman writes:

“Think about all of the fantasy, sci-fi, and comic book images of characters. The guys look tough and the girls look sexy. That’s how it is, and that’s how it should be.” – Misty

image by FernacularThat’s how it is, for sure. But it’s not how things should be. If toughness is the province of one gender and sexiness the other everyone is impoverished. Imagine if the boot was on the other foot. What if the women got the armour and the men the armour: could Batman take himself seriously in the outfit Fernacular has sketched? (See more reimaginings here)

And if the sexism argument doesn’t move you what about the racism one? Are you comfortable with people of colour being portrayed as brutish monsters and white people as civilised high races? No, I didn’t think so.

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is one of the most successful roleplaying franchises and the company that produces the game guides, Wizards of the Coast, is preparing for a new edition. A friend of mine has launched a petition to be sent to their CEO asking for artwork which reflects the diversity of the real world.

You can sign the petition here: D&D should be for everyone, not just white men.

February 3, 2011

Censorship or responsiveness?

Bitch magazine posted a list of “100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader”. The original list included Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce and Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. After receiving critique that Tender Morsels validates (by failing to critique or discuss) rape as an act of vengeance, Sister’s Red has a victim-blaming scene and Living Dead Girl is triggering, the editors decided to remove/replace the books commenting: “We still feel that these books have merit and would not hesitate to recommend them in certain instances, but we don’t feel comfortable keeping them on this particular list.”

John Scalzi posted about this on his blog and reported that:

a number of high profile, award-winning and/or bestselling YA authors, including Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, Maureen Johnson and Ellen Kages hit the roof and show up in the comments to demand their own books be removed from the list as well.

But I’m not so sure that this deserves to be called censorship. I find myself feeling differently about this than I did about a teenage literary festival disinviting guest of honour Ellen Hopkins after one librarian challenged the suitability of her work. Is Bitch really wrong to ensure that their list of YA books is feminist-friendly? If a book had made it on to the list but had the conclusion that a feisty female character should stop being such a tomboy and wear high heels, they’d surely be right to remove it. Obviously in an ideal world they’d have researched, read and discussed all the titles before putting them on the list but even a book might be challenged by a reader who noticed something the editors didn’t.

I haven’t read any of the contentious titles so I don’t know if the criticism is validated. (I turn out to have read only 17/100 so I need to get to the local library and check out all the books I’ve missed.) I am a little uncomfortable with one person making a complaint and then the list being changed. Although, in the case of Sister’s Red the commenter did link to another blog post with 98 comments at the BookSmugglers blog on the potential problems with the book.

Part of being an active feminist or feminist ally means listening when someone tells you that text or imagery is problematic, that the message you are sending is not the one you intended to send, that you need to think harder, think deeper about certain ideas and concepts.

Does Scott Westerfield’s status as a published YA author of a book on the list or his opinion that Tender Morsels is a good book constitute more valid grounds for inclusion than the complainants’ grounds for exclusion?

What do you think, readers? Bitch made a mistake, I think we can all agree on that. But what was their mistake? Including the books in the first place? Taking them off the list again?

Is this censorship or response to criticism? (Interestingly one commenter liked the list but thought it was inappropriate to show to a teenage girl because it includes the word ‘bitch’, the name of the magazine. Now that *is* censorship and the magazine rightly refused to remove their own name from the list. I can usually tell what is and what isn’t censorship.)

Let me know your thoughts. And also how many of the books on the list you’ve read – or if you’ve read the three contentious titles.

January 14, 2011

My mother said…

Filed under: Ghost of a Chance,links,reviews of my books — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 10:44 am

My mother, children’s writer Mary Hoffman, has reviewed Ghost of a Chance on her blog – and most flatteringly, which she promises is not nepotism!

You can also read a short piece by me about how I came to write the book.

Both blog post and my comments contain a spoiler – although the same one you’d get from reading the blurb of the book.

January 3, 2011

Happy New Year and countdown to Ghost of a Chance!

Filed under: book release,Ghost of a Chance,links,news,reviews of my books — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 4:59 pm

WordPress has sent an email to tell me my blog was “fresher than ever” in 2010, which is nice. Unfortunately I think they are still working from the figures from my old hosted account, not my current embedded one. But perhaps that means my blog is even fresher than WordPress thinks?

Ghost of a Chance coverIt’s 3 days until the publication of Ghost of a Chance and I’ll be celebrating here on my blog so stop by and leave a comment. Amazon started shipping it in December although due to the snow some of those copies are trapped in warehouses. But if you’ve got your copy and have read it already I’d be especially interested to know what you think.

I’ll also be posting the first chapter on my webpage for the book: Ghost of a Chance. So if you haven’t got a copy you can try it out. My artist friend is hard at work designing a new frieze for the webpage which should be online shortly. The book has a peacock theme and so too will the frieze.

One website, The Bookbag, has already posted a review of Ghost of a Chance – and recommended it, thanks Robert James!

I’ve been three years writing this book – a long time for me! And I’m very excited to know what people think of it. I can’t quite believe it’s almost publication day!

October 26, 2010

Romeo and Leanne strike back

Filed under: links,things I read on the internet — Tags: , — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 1:08 pm

Shirley Dent waxes wroth in the Guardian today about personalised novelty books. It’s not news though. I confessed to being deeply disturbed by this in November 2009.

You know with a download of any classic from Project Gutenberg you could do this yourself. Insert yourself into Catherine’s place in Wuthering Heights or Anne’s in Anne of Green Gables. Does the facsimile cover really make that much difference?

I bet this is the kind of gift no one buys for themselves. You’ll get one of these from good old uncle Bob who knows nothing about you except that you ‘like books’ and your name – which he can’t spell. I’ll probably end up with a copy of Reanne Through the Looking Glass.

If I were going to spend my time on something like this I’d do a self-insertion as a character into the Chalet School novels and Mary-Sue myself to victory. I too could fall off the side of a mountain and be rescued by one or more Maynards. I can make the most money for the school sale. Snarky mistresses would bow before my intellect and wit. Everyone from Betty Wynne Davis to Verity-Ann Carey would want to be my friend…

Ahem. Still, I think the personalised book company has a problem when their product is less appealing than the lowest form of fanfiction!

October 4, 2010

Interrogating the text from the sock-puppet perspective

Attention, authors of the world! It is bad enough to argue with people who post reviews of your books on Amazon telling them they’re not reading it right. (cf Anne Rice, 2004)

But it is so much worse to do so under a sock-puppet alias which you otherwise use to post glowing reviews of your own books. (cf Christopher Pike, 2010) Also, if someone calls you on the fact you got the capital of Turkey wrong then it might be wiser to apologise than continue to berate them. Oh and perhaps do some research as to where Turkey is (i.e. not in Palestine), the ethnic background of the population (i.e. not Arabs) and the state religion (i.e. none; Turkey is a secular state.) PS: Sikhs are not Arabs, not everyone who wears a turban can be conveniently lumped into your concept of the Other.

This kind of behaviour is not cool and it makes authors look stupid. Got something wrong? – apologise and fix it. Someone doesn’t like your book? – that’s their prerogative. If you really must post a rebuttal then things to avoid include: mansplaining (Pike), racism (Elizabeth Bear), aggression and unpleasantness (R Malone). None of these things will encourage people to read your books.

Since I’m beginning to get gigs speaking to writers about how to market themselves on the inter I’ll recap that as a handy little list. Although I hope no one I speak to would even consider most of these!

  1. Don’t attempt a rebuttal of reviews of your work – you either look desperate or crazy or both
  2. If you really really really want to write a rebuttal, don’t use a sock-puppet. People will find out and then you will look desperate, crazy AND creepy
  3. Also don’t use sock-puppets to write about how great you are. (Another author was doing this last week but I don’t have a link because I read about it in Private Eye.)
  4. If you got something really obvious wrong, apologise. People are more likely to forgive you if you say sorry.
  5. If you’ve apologised, don’t un-apologise later. No one will ever believe your apologies again if you retract them.
  6. Enlisting your fans to attack strangers on the internet is rabble-rousing. Don’t do it.
  7. Assuming you know more about someone else’s culture than they do is racist and cultural imperialism. Don’t do that either.

And finally, don’t assume your sock-puppetry and silliness will go unnoticed on the vast reaches of the internet. The internet is big but information moves very quickly across it. And if fandomwank don’t find you, stupidfreedrama will. And if you annoy the internet enough 4chan will come for you and you don’t want that.

September 27, 2010

Banned books week: speak loudly!

The Day They Came To Arrest the Book

The Day They Came To Arrest the Book

September 25 to October 2 is Banned Books Week. Here’s a list of the top ten most challenged books in the US (in 2009) and here’s another link to the top hundred most challenged books (2000-2009). What’s depressing about these lists for me is how old some of these books are. We’re talking about important YA fiction that I grew up with and yet these books are still being challenged for their honest and powerful engagement with important issues.

Speak was published in 1999
The Color Purple was published in 1982
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was published in 1976
The Chocolate War was published in 1974
Forever was published in 1975
To Kill A Mockingbird was published in 1960
Brave New World was published in 1932

Those are books dating from 78 years ago still being challenged.

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.  A banning is the removal of those materials.  Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others.  Due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection. (ALA)

And one has to wonder, on what basis are these challenges being made? Dr Wesley Scroggins would like to ban Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. He cites it first in his article “Filthy books demeaning to Republic education“. Scroggins thinks this book is inappropriate and “should be classified as soft pornography”. The subject matter? A high school teenager’s struggle to speak out about having been raped by another student. I’ve read Speak several times and there is nothing in this book that could be counted as soft pornography. Perhaps Dr Scroggins equates rape with porn – in which case it’s his opinions that teenagers should be protected from.

I should also add that far from defending this book against the likes of Scroggins, Republic Superintendent Vern Minor commented: that:

“the curriculum is abstinence-based and that students can opt out of sex education classes. He also said “Slaughterhouse Five” has been removed, and that “Twenty Boy Summer” is being reviewed. Some of the issues raised by Scroggins were before the start of the school year and were complicated by the timing and renewal process of teachers’ contracts, Minor said.”

The ALA explains that challenges are often seemingly motivated by the desire to ‘protect’ children.

Often challenges are motivated by a desire to protect children from “inappropriate” sexual content or “offensive” language. The following were the top three reasons cited for challenging materials as reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom:

  1. the material was considered to be “sexually explicit”
  2. the material contained “offensive language”
  3. the materials was “unsuited to any age group”

But what sort of protection are we actually taking about? Not protection from the bulling rule of a powerful clique (events portrayed in the Chocolate War), not protection from sexual abuse (events portrayed in Speak), not protection from racism (events portrayed in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry). This so-called protection is from reading, discussing and thinking about the books which portray the issues and by-extension the issues themselves. In fact, information is being replaced by misinformation (rape = soft porn). And don’t even get me started on the value of abstinence-only sex education classes with an opt-out option – another example of misinformation or no information being considered somehow less offesnive or challenging than ACTUAL INFORMATION.

Anyway, Banned Books Week comes fast on the heels of a teenage literary festival disinviting guest of honour Ellen Hopkins after one librarian challenged the suitability of her work. When other speakers pulled out the festival was cancelled and some commenters blamned the banned author and her friends for this result. That’s right, because victims are always to blame for the acts of their oppressors.

I honestly think it’s getting harder and harder to publish important, brave and valuable books about issues that affects the lives of teenagers. Perhaps because Dr Scroggins believes all teenagers should or do live in a 1950s twilight zone world. Or perhaps because some modern publishers and critics think the issues are done and dusted: that racism, sexism, classism and other social ills are now in the past so let’s publish Disney Princesses and Glitter Fairies and forget about that difficult stuff.

Obviously there are some wonderful forward-thinking individuals in the publishing world, writers, editors, publishers and critics – not to forget the dedicated librarians who believe passionately in access to books. But I’ve been told by a prominent publisher to concentrate on the romance angle so a book of mine would be “too issuesy” and it’s common practice for every single epithet (from “fuck” to “bloody hell” to “arse”) to be stripped from my work before publication.

If it’s this difficult for parents, politicians and other ‘protectors’ of children to accept the books on the ALA list which are decades old, how less willing will they be to accept contemporary fiction with contemporary themes? There’s a bleak outlook for YA fiction if this trend continues.

But in the light of banned books week, let’s take some time to honour those authors of challenging fiction. To Judy Blume who taught my generation about the physical biology and the emotional implications of sex. To Robert Cormier who in books from The Chocolate War, After the First Death and We All Fall Down was never afraid to write about frightening difficult subjects. To Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, who said in an interview: “But censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them.”

To all the authors who speak out about uncomfortable truths, I salute you. Keep writing and keep fighting for these important books.

September 21, 2010

The angel of death comes for the parents in children’s fiction

Leila Sales, assistant editor at Penguin Young Readers Group , writes about The Ol’ Dead Dad Syndrome in Publishers Weekly.

It is not believable that so many kids are missing one, if not both parents. Slews of them! Hundreds! To quote Oscar Wilde, sort of: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a parent in nearly every children’s book looks like lazy writing.”

I agree with two of her reasons for calling it lazy writing: “First, a dead parent is one fewer character to have to write.” and Second, there’s the instant sympathy factor.. Where we diverge is on Leila’s third point: “Third, grownups are boring.” although she does suggest later that authors could try to “Write parents who actually have something to contribute to the story, who aren’t just a barrier between the kids and fun.”

I don’t think grown-ups are intrinsically boring but they do get in the way in children’s fiction. I think the reason so many authors write them out is because they want their child and teenager characters to solve their own problems, to find their own answers and face their own fears and the role of a good parent is to help with those things. That said, I have by-and-large not played the Angel of Death to the parents in my fiction because I find it more of a challenge to keep them in the text but leave them unable to intervene. In Waking Dream the death of one parent triggers the action, the other parents are at first unaware of what’s happening, then later aware but unable to influence events, reading their children’s stories through diaries that report their ongoing adventures. In Bad Blood the parents are too caught up in the emotional struggle of the family to identify the supernatural elements, they too must wait and worry when the teenager characters are reported missing.

In my forthcoming novel Ghost of a Chance I do admittedly write out two parents. An unknown father is never mentioned and a mother is dead before my heroine knew her. But in neither case were they active, caring and much missed parents. The real parental figure is a grandfather who is hospitalised early in the narrative, keeping him from meddling in my central character’s evolution. Other characters have perfectly functional living parents and have to lie to them to keep them from intervening in the plot.

I really do enjoy the challenge of including parents in children’s books and including them as real people rather than the “clueless or uninvolved” ciphers Leila suggests as a possibility. It’s not a binary choice between parents as all-knowing entities who can solve every problem or hapless and hopeless nonentities. I much prefer them as humans, muddling along between the gutter and the stars. This is one of the reasons I like Margaret Mahy so much. In The Changeover, Catalogue of the Universe and The Tricksters the parents are real people, flawed but trying to do better. Laura’s mother is frantic over the advancing illness of her younger child, Tycho’s parents have given their attention to their charismatic turbulent daughter and pay less attention to their quiet younger son, Harry’s parents are trying to get past a private and personal crisis.

Leila’s piece makes me want to challenge the absenteeism of parents. What if the parents followed you through the hole in the wall? Came along on the quest? Fought the monsters and won – or lost? What effect would that have on the child character, and on the child reader?

September 8, 2010

Women writers: SF edition

Filed under: links,recommended reading — Tags: , — Rhiannon Lassiter @ 9:11 am

A friend of mine was recently disappointed to find that almost all the staff-recommended books listed in well-known London SF book store Forbidden Planet were by men. She has blogged about this herself here: Elevating women writers. She asked me and some other friends to make suggestions of female authors of SF to propose to the staff of Forbidden Planet and this is what we came up with.

(The list is the same as on frax’s journal, but I’ve alphabetised it for my own convenience.)

Lois McMaster Bujold – Vorkosigan saga
Octavia Butler – the Parable of the Talents/Lilith’s Brood
Trudi Cannavan – The Black Magician series
Susanna Clarke – Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Barbara Hambly – Darwath/Dragonsbane
Elizabeth Haydon – Rhapsody series
Robin Hobb – The Tawny Man trilogy/The Liveship Traders series
Gwyneth Jones – The Aleutian Series
Katherine Kerr – Palace series/Deverry series
Mercedes Lackey – The Last Herald Mage trilogy
Tanith Lee – Tales from the Flat Earth/The Silver Metal Lover/Drinking Sapphire Wine
Ursula Le Guin – The Earthsea Trilogy/ The Left Hand of Darkness/The Dispossessed
R. A. MacAvoy – The Lens of the World series/ Tea with the Black Dragon
Julian May – Saga of the Exiles
Patricia McKillip – The Riddle Master Trilogy/ Fool’s Run
Robin McKinley – The Blue Sword/The Hero and the Crown
Elizabeth Moon – The Sheepfarmer’s Daughter
Andre Norton – Witch World series/Red Hart Magic
Naomi Novik – Temeraire series
Mary Doria Russell – The Sparrow/Children of God
Felicity Savage – Humility Garden/Delta City
Sheri S Tepper – The Gate to Women’s Country/The Margarets/Beauty.
James Tiptree – Writes SF short stories, all of them are recommended.
Joan D. Vinge – The Snow Queen Cycle/ Cat
Michelle West – The Sacred Hunt and The Sun Sword series

Does anyone have further suggestions of SF women writers to add?

March 2, 2010

Things I read on the internet

The Guardian asked writers for their ten rules for writing (part one and part two available here). I like lots of bit and pieces of advice and might take one rule from each author. But overall I liked this advice the best:

Ian Rankin

1 Read lots.
2 Write lots.
3 Learn to be self-critical.
4 Learn what criticism to accept.
5 Be persistent.
6 Have a story worth telling.
7 Don’t give up.
8 Know the market.
9 Get lucky.
10 Stay lucky.

Other things I read on the internet suggest a couple of addendums:

Additional rule a) If a reviewer critiques your book don’t take it personally. Especially don’t declare internet war on the reviewer, abuse them by email and in comments to forums and create sock puppets to praise your book and star rate it. That makes you look crazy – and desperate.

Additional rule b) Even if your dad is a rock star that doesn’t mean you can trace the art from other people’s manga and publish it under your own name without the entire fannish interwebs calling you out on it. And then CNN will notice. That makes you look stupid – and a plagiarist.

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