Notes

I can’t remember much about “Sing the Four Quarters” by Tanya Huff, right now, other than that the main character was bisexual, in a sexually open but emotionally committed relationship with another woman, and currently pregnant by a male one-night-stand whom she now has to save from prison because he was wrongfully accused of high treason. And no, she doesn’t end up romantically linked with the guy. There was also a gay, blind character who was her best friend, but he was pretty stereotypical (charming, flirty, great fashion sense, etc.). In terms of rape issues… I think the main villain was a sadist and using another villain sexually in a slightly creepy way – he was a masochist and very much wanted her to, but it was implied that his masochism was based on non-sexual abuse done to him as a kid, and that he didn’t like to be that way. I think it was also mentioned briefly that she sexually abused her teenage nephew in the past, until he put his foot down and refused for good (at age 19, it didn’t say when it started). But the whole thing is not depicted graphically, if consensual SM triggers you. Even if I can’t remember much of the writing style and plot details, I didn’t resell the book after reading it, so it must have been pretty good, in a largely harmless, utopian free-love society, “Homophobia? What’s that?” kind of way. Actually, I think most of the major POV characters in that novel and the 3 following books turn out to be gay or bi.


My new favorite series right now, or at least the author / series whose learning curve I’m most impressed by, is Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards novels. It has a similar mix of rogue-ish fun and gruesome brutality as the early Nightrunner books, but with a lot more swearing and less magic and honor. (The heroes are thieves / con-artists on a holy mission to remind the rich and powerful that they’re not invulnerable.) Though sadly there are no major queer characters so far. (Well, you could interpret the main character as demisexual, since he literally has only ever gotten aroused for one woman and spends the first two books being functionally asexual in her absence. But it turns out to be more like fate/curse-induced childhood imprinting, so it doesn’t really count. Yes, the text seems aware that this is creepy instead of romantic. Still, it’s refreshing for me as an asexual starved for media representation to see a 20-something male hero who isn’t interested in sleeping around, but is neither particularly proud and aloof about this, like Sherlock Holmes, nor particularly depressed or ashamed about not being able to get it on for 5 years and utterly failing when trying once with a sex worker. It also becomes increasingly obvious over the course of the books that he’s bipolar. Though the books don’t handle his depressive episodes very well. His best friend usually shames him out of it after a few weeks, which: Just no.)

The first book is full of homophobic insults leveled at straight men, and no queer people in sight anywhere, but the author gets a lot better about that with the following books. (No more such insults from sympathetic characters; instead lots of random gay/bi background people mentioned positively – maybe with the next book, he’ll actually have the guts to write a queer character with more than a few lines.) The series is much better than Nightrunner in its treatment of PoC characters, and I can’t remember more than a handful of women who didn’t know how to use a weapon. I particularly liked the pirate-captain-with-a-heart-of-gold, black, middle-aged, single mother of two young children and scourge of the seas, in book 2. The society in the first book is quite patriarchal and most of the major characters are male, but that also gets better with other city-states in the following two books. And the sexist failings of the author’s first attempt at world building actually become a plot point later on – it's the reason why the best feminist (NOT straw-feminist) character I’ve ever seen written by a male author left that society behind, and can’t truly get along with the male hero, no matter how hard he tries to understand his male privilege and be better. After the first book, Lynch even goes out of his way to make more than half of the random guards, hired swords, pirates and military personnel female (there's even an in-universe reason why you absolutely have to have a female officer or at least a woman on every ship), so his actual swashbuckling women characters won’t come across as “exceptional women” - a technique I hadn’t seen employed so thoroughly before.

Rape issues do come up sometimes, but in the major cases apparently mainly to make a point to the audience. I.e. said pirate captain explains to her male captives / new crew members that on her ship, nobody cares with whom you have sex, but forcing anyone holds the death penalty. There's an historical aside in the first book that tells us that the sex workers basically unionized seperately from the male-dominated crime syndicates because some of the male pimps belonging to said crime syndicates used to sexually abuse them, which the sex workers eventually answered with rebellion, killing the worst pimps and starting a turf war so brutal and effective that even the current crime king who killed all the other crime bosses in a power grab never dared mess with the truce they had eventually established with the new female-led sex worker guilds. The feminist character at one point angrily explains a fantastical version of Shroedinger’s Rapist crossed with that awful African virgin-blood-heals-STDs-myth to the hero, in horrifying detail, to get through to him why she has trust issues with men. (No, she wasn’t actually attacked – but she feels that she’s had to be on her guard all her life.) And the only offscreen-attempted-rape-as-drama scene I can remember right now seems to exist both to give the heroes major trouble (the rapist was their bankroller/mark and a noble, and he got stabbed to death by his socially underprivileged victim before he even got the clothes off her, which means now their con is under water and they have to save their survivor friend from the law, which would be on the noble's side…), but also so the entire cast of ‘good guys’ can take down an older male authority figure in their group for his victim blaming. I could practically see the author going “See, boys? This is how you should react when your friends pull this shit.”

He does do the "it only happens to women" thing, somewhat, but in this case I find it forgivable, because he seems to use at least the third book, where rape issues come up most, to educate his audience about real world feminist issues (seriously, the discussions between the teenage feminist and the main character at the same age read like half-formed, frustrated Tumblr manifests about things like institutional male privilege and Nice Guy behavior and male entitlement to female attention, and the main character is almost too accepting and willing to change about it all - like I bet the author wishes he was at 16, now that he finally gets it), and it does happen far more to women in the real world, so.

I think the only times sexual assault of male characters comes up is in the context of the threat of child abuse (the world has rarely mentioned underground slave trade, and the main characters all grew up unprotected on the streets - or rather, the only good thing about their early childhood protector was that he would literally rather kill them than sell them to the slavers to be sexually abused); some unfortunate thoughtless bravado / threats by the heroes ("We'll rip off your arm and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine" and variations thereof, nothing actually sexually motivated); and one time when the main hero tries to rile up a guy by accusing him of intending to date-rape his male drinking companions, in rather colorful detail. Which, on the one hand: it's better than just accusing him of being gay, and the fact that "rapist" is THE accusation that gets men really furious in no time flat is a good insight for an author who's trying to be more feminist. I think that was also why it had to be male-on-male date-rape, because the scene is treated as funny. (As in: the character's childish delight in saying something extremely vulgar and the accused's spluttering "I don't know how to express my outrage while still maintaining decorum" reaction is meant to be funny, not the idea that someone might be raped.) I suppose the author didn't want to make a rape joke about assaulting women, or write about false rape accusations involving women at any point. However, a rape joke about men is still a rape joke, and the implication that the worst insult the main character can think of is "gay rapist" rather than just "rapist" is still problematic, IMHO.