Aelin Lovelace (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elialshadowpine) wrote2014-02-26 06:06 am
elialshadowpine) wrote2014-02-26 06:06 am
[unfiltered] The Power of Representation: SFF Saved My Life
A perennial question amongst the writing community these days (particularly in post-Racefail SFF) is that of representation. It's heartening to see it as an active topic of discussion, but I think that something that gets lost sometimes is how important it is. I'm many things: pagan, polyamorous, (mostly) lesbian, mentally ill, on the Autism Spectrum, disabled, childfree, gender-questioning, among others. Let me tell you my story.
I grew up in a very Christian household, and a few years of my teen life were tarnished by my Dad getting into Christian Fundamentalism (of the "listening to rock music is signing an implicit contract with Satan for your soul" type, also "music in other languages is secretly witch spells being cast because you can't understand the language" -- let's just say my listening to Rammstein didn't go over well). I was pretty isolated as a child and teen because I was homeschooled and lucky to see another person my own age every six months. This background is important later.
As a young child, I was a precocious reader. I remember reading Little Women and Alice in Wonderland at about six. I didn't dare read my Mom's science fiction and fantasy, though, because I was already having panic attacks -- the earliest I remember being at two. I thought I would get in trouble, and that was enough to trigger a panic attack. So, I read the kid's literature of that time, which was almost entirely made up of books like the Baby-Sitter's Club, Sweet Valley High, and the younger versions of those same series. They were fucking depressing. I remember being suicidal at about eight because the world that existed in those books was nothing like my own life; at that age, the main thing was being in school, but as an adult, I can look back and tell that those books probably didn't accurately portray anyone's life. Eight year old me didn't know that.
I found SFF when I was eleven. I remember which book it was, too. Mom had a copy of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Hawkmistress! in the car. She dropped by work one day while we were out running errands to pick something up, and I had no other books. I picked it up, read the back, started reading. I was hooked, and later read through the rest of the series, in which I was introduced to gay, bisexual, lesbian, and polyamorous characters. I was introduced to feminism.
I read Mercedes Lackey, who also had characters of the same. When I was eleven or twelve and suicidally depressed, and unwilling to talk to either of my parents, my Mom gave me a copy of Piers Anthony's Virtual Mode, because the main character was a depressed, suicidal teen who continues to struggle with her depression despite her love interest and her adventures across many different worlds. Some might question the wisdom of this given that the books are also sexually explicit and Anthony certainly has plenty of dodgy elements, but I can't say she was wrong.
Being able to read about a character who struggled with the same things I did made me feel less alone. Being able to point at a character and say, "She's like me!", I cannot truly put into words the effect that had. I cried, and I kept reading, and though depression is something I still struggle with (as I have bipolar disorder), it helped me beyond words.
Mom also gave me Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality to read, to think about religion, which is honestly in part responsible for me becoming pagan. It isn't that I hold anything against the Christian God or Christ, but I don't feel called to that path. I couldn't not believe in the existence of all the Gods, especially reading those books, and even before formally changing my religion, I had strong connections with non-Christian deities such as Bast.
I didn't realize I was bisexual (and from then on, through experience, realize that I much prefer women, although not exclusively; my married partner is, after all, non-binary albeit more feminine than masculine) until I was 17. Part of my realization had to do with that I began to look at my experiences in a new light. The vast majority of my crushes were on women, either real or fictional; I did not find men as a general rule attractive (I could count on a hand the times I had felt that way and almost all were fictional non-human men in books or TV shows).
At that point, I had spent two or three years hearing my Dad go on and on about how gay people were going to Hell. Do you know why I did not feel that way, despite that being an ever-present thing I lived with?
It was because I could not look at the characters in the books I had come to love, in Lackey's books and MZB's and in so many others, and think that those people were damned. I refused to believe in a God that would damn people for simply being who they are.
Later, when the man who would become my fiance (now ex) came out to me as trans, I couldn't comprehend his fear that I would turn against him, knowing the truth, because I had read books with characters who were trans (or perhaps not quite trans as we know it but similar). I didn't see why it would be any big deal at all; I loved him, and that was that.
And again later, when I met polyamorous folks, and found out that even though I expected it of myself, I could not be monogamous (and I have always been honest about it), it was because of characters I had been introduced to in stories that I did not hate myself.
If I had not read the books I did, if I had not had those experiences, I would have been left with a father who thought everything I am was deserving of going to Hell. I would've hated myself, and I likely would not have even been able to come out to myself, or accept the truth. I don't know where I would be; I might be dead. I hate to admit to myself that is a saddeningly likely possibility.
And even recently, this still happens. A couple years ago, I decided to read through some of the Valdemar books again. In Oathbreakers, there is a character that I had missed on my first read-through, which had been as a teen. Kethry's love interest Jadrek has rheumatoid arthritis, or something much like it. The way that it is described made me burst into tears, because I had never before read a story with a character who has chronic pain. (Jacqueline Koyanagi's Ascension, published last year, is also excellent for this.)
Also worthy of note is the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, which is the first series I have ever read with a bipolar main character. Most people talk about his physical health issues, but since most of those are solved by far future tech (although not without a cost), his mental illness is far more interesting to me. I have never read a character with bipolar portrayed as just a normal person (... as normal as Miles can ever be, anyway), with people who recognize his mental illness and accept it as part of who he is and love him not in spite of it but for it -- yup, that made me cry. I made my partner read the books because "this is how my brain works."
Even now, as an adult, reading stories about characters like me, especially when we with pain disorders are considered unfit for adventure stories, can still bring me to tears... and give me hope.
This is why diversity is important, for so many things. This is why it is important to delve beyond the default. I won't say that the books I read were not problematic, especially by current views; hardly. But they were dearly important to a sheltered child who needed desperately to read about people like her, and people not like her. Some of what I thought was "not me" later turned out to be exactly me.
And to others I say: Keep writing. Think about your characters. Question the default: How would your character change if he were a she, or mentally ill, or disabled, or trans, or black, or Asian, or bisexual, or asexual, or so many things. Don't let fear of "getting it wrong" stop you; no single group is a monolith and some books that have spoken deeply to me have not reached others in the same way. It is impossible to write a character or story that speaks to everyone, but that isn't a bad thing. If anything, it shows why diversity is so important.
If you are concerned about your plot or character having problematic elements, consider your other characters and reach beyond the default. As an example, let's take the gay villain trope. If your only gay character happens to be the Bad Guy, this can send a message that you probably don't intend. The easiest solution to this is to think actively about your other characters.
You are not limited to one type of character per book; for instance, I have the first book of a series in progress where I decided the story worked better if the co-main character and love interest was a woman. By doing this, the majority of my cast became either gay/lesbian or bisexual. I feel (and so do my betas!) that this has made my story all the stronger. Ask yourself if there is another character (who is not a villain or antagonist) who could be gay or bisexual (or whatever is that you are concerned about). If so, problematic trope averted!
Above all: Keep the faith. It can be hard, when you fear getting it wrong and read advice that is in diametric opposition. But in my opinion, this is the most important thing about writing; reaching others, showing them they are not alone, and giving them hope. Someday, it might be your work that brings light to a suicidal child’s life.
This entry was originally posted at http://nonny.dreamwidth.org/514044.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I grew up in a very Christian household, and a few years of my teen life were tarnished by my Dad getting into Christian Fundamentalism (of the "listening to rock music is signing an implicit contract with Satan for your soul" type, also "music in other languages is secretly witch spells being cast because you can't understand the language" -- let's just say my listening to Rammstein didn't go over well). I was pretty isolated as a child and teen because I was homeschooled and lucky to see another person my own age every six months. This background is important later.
As a young child, I was a precocious reader. I remember reading Little Women and Alice in Wonderland at about six. I didn't dare read my Mom's science fiction and fantasy, though, because I was already having panic attacks -- the earliest I remember being at two. I thought I would get in trouble, and that was enough to trigger a panic attack. So, I read the kid's literature of that time, which was almost entirely made up of books like the Baby-Sitter's Club, Sweet Valley High, and the younger versions of those same series. They were fucking depressing. I remember being suicidal at about eight because the world that existed in those books was nothing like my own life; at that age, the main thing was being in school, but as an adult, I can look back and tell that those books probably didn't accurately portray anyone's life. Eight year old me didn't know that.
I found SFF when I was eleven. I remember which book it was, too. Mom had a copy of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Hawkmistress! in the car. She dropped by work one day while we were out running errands to pick something up, and I had no other books. I picked it up, read the back, started reading. I was hooked, and later read through the rest of the series, in which I was introduced to gay, bisexual, lesbian, and polyamorous characters. I was introduced to feminism.
I read Mercedes Lackey, who also had characters of the same. When I was eleven or twelve and suicidally depressed, and unwilling to talk to either of my parents, my Mom gave me a copy of Piers Anthony's Virtual Mode, because the main character was a depressed, suicidal teen who continues to struggle with her depression despite her love interest and her adventures across many different worlds. Some might question the wisdom of this given that the books are also sexually explicit and Anthony certainly has plenty of dodgy elements, but I can't say she was wrong.
Being able to read about a character who struggled with the same things I did made me feel less alone. Being able to point at a character and say, "She's like me!", I cannot truly put into words the effect that had. I cried, and I kept reading, and though depression is something I still struggle with (as I have bipolar disorder), it helped me beyond words.
Mom also gave me Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality to read, to think about religion, which is honestly in part responsible for me becoming pagan. It isn't that I hold anything against the Christian God or Christ, but I don't feel called to that path. I couldn't not believe in the existence of all the Gods, especially reading those books, and even before formally changing my religion, I had strong connections with non-Christian deities such as Bast.
I didn't realize I was bisexual (and from then on, through experience, realize that I much prefer women, although not exclusively; my married partner is, after all, non-binary albeit more feminine than masculine) until I was 17. Part of my realization had to do with that I began to look at my experiences in a new light. The vast majority of my crushes were on women, either real or fictional; I did not find men as a general rule attractive (I could count on a hand the times I had felt that way and almost all were fictional non-human men in books or TV shows).
At that point, I had spent two or three years hearing my Dad go on and on about how gay people were going to Hell. Do you know why I did not feel that way, despite that being an ever-present thing I lived with?
It was because I could not look at the characters in the books I had come to love, in Lackey's books and MZB's and in so many others, and think that those people were damned. I refused to believe in a God that would damn people for simply being who they are.
Later, when the man who would become my fiance (now ex) came out to me as trans, I couldn't comprehend his fear that I would turn against him, knowing the truth, because I had read books with characters who were trans (or perhaps not quite trans as we know it but similar). I didn't see why it would be any big deal at all; I loved him, and that was that.
And again later, when I met polyamorous folks, and found out that even though I expected it of myself, I could not be monogamous (and I have always been honest about it), it was because of characters I had been introduced to in stories that I did not hate myself.
If I had not read the books I did, if I had not had those experiences, I would have been left with a father who thought everything I am was deserving of going to Hell. I would've hated myself, and I likely would not have even been able to come out to myself, or accept the truth. I don't know where I would be; I might be dead. I hate to admit to myself that is a saddeningly likely possibility.
And even recently, this still happens. A couple years ago, I decided to read through some of the Valdemar books again. In Oathbreakers, there is a character that I had missed on my first read-through, which had been as a teen. Kethry's love interest Jadrek has rheumatoid arthritis, or something much like it. The way that it is described made me burst into tears, because I had never before read a story with a character who has chronic pain. (Jacqueline Koyanagi's Ascension, published last year, is also excellent for this.)
Also worthy of note is the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, which is the first series I have ever read with a bipolar main character. Most people talk about his physical health issues, but since most of those are solved by far future tech (although not without a cost), his mental illness is far more interesting to me. I have never read a character with bipolar portrayed as just a normal person (... as normal as Miles can ever be, anyway), with people who recognize his mental illness and accept it as part of who he is and love him not in spite of it but for it -- yup, that made me cry. I made my partner read the books because "this is how my brain works."
Even now, as an adult, reading stories about characters like me, especially when we with pain disorders are considered unfit for adventure stories, can still bring me to tears... and give me hope.
This is why diversity is important, for so many things. This is why it is important to delve beyond the default. I won't say that the books I read were not problematic, especially by current views; hardly. But they were dearly important to a sheltered child who needed desperately to read about people like her, and people not like her. Some of what I thought was "not me" later turned out to be exactly me.
And to others I say: Keep writing. Think about your characters. Question the default: How would your character change if he were a she, or mentally ill, or disabled, or trans, or black, or Asian, or bisexual, or asexual, or so many things. Don't let fear of "getting it wrong" stop you; no single group is a monolith and some books that have spoken deeply to me have not reached others in the same way. It is impossible to write a character or story that speaks to everyone, but that isn't a bad thing. If anything, it shows why diversity is so important.
If you are concerned about your plot or character having problematic elements, consider your other characters and reach beyond the default. As an example, let's take the gay villain trope. If your only gay character happens to be the Bad Guy, this can send a message that you probably don't intend. The easiest solution to this is to think actively about your other characters.
You are not limited to one type of character per book; for instance, I have the first book of a series in progress where I decided the story worked better if the co-main character and love interest was a woman. By doing this, the majority of my cast became either gay/lesbian or bisexual. I feel (and so do my betas!) that this has made my story all the stronger. Ask yourself if there is another character (who is not a villain or antagonist) who could be gay or bisexual (or whatever is that you are concerned about). If so, problematic trope averted!
Above all: Keep the faith. It can be hard, when you fear getting it wrong and read advice that is in diametric opposition. But in my opinion, this is the most important thing about writing; reaching others, showing them they are not alone, and giving them hope. Someday, it might be your work that brings light to a suicidal child’s life.
This entry was originally posted at http://nonny.dreamwidth.org/514044.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
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I credit SFF with saving my life, too, as an abused child who desperately needed an escape valve -- and a reality check that not all families were like mine, and that I had hopes of growing up and GETTING OUT and building a life for myself away from my family of origin.
Anne McCaffrey and, later, Mercedes Lackey were really important to me -- in part because they showed abused girls/children who weren't irreparably broken by their experiences. Menolly and Talia, Kethry and Tarma and Vanyel, were all *important* to me.
They got out. And, eventually, so did I. And a lot of my attitudes on social issues were forged from my experiences with SFF -- Paganism, polyamory, queerness, non-binary people, race issues, marriage equality, social justice, reproductive rights -- so much of those attitudes, and my position of compassionate understanding toward people who were different from me... that can be laid at the feet of SFF, too, because I sure as hell didn't learn that stuff at home.
*hugs*
-- A <3
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Tarma and Kethry really were incredibly important for me too, and probably my favorite of Lackey's. I always head-canoned Tarma and Kethry as an asexual romantic couple, with Kethry being polyamorous and loving Jadrek as well, also because she wants children (also, Jadrek is the character with rheumatoid arthritis). Honestly, I think there's a good argument for it being a poly triad, except that Tarma is asexual/vowed to celibacy. (I say asexual because even though it is a vow to her goddess, she seems to have no interest in sex whatsoever.) Edit - Actually, I went back and and read the end of Oathbreakers to find Jadrek's name and there is a scene where he confesses to Tarma that he loves her, and she tells him that she loves him back. He also recognizes her own oath and does not expect her to change her sexuality for him. So, maybe that's actually canon, not head-canon.
I did not talk about as much on race issues because more of my experiences with race came from YA books, which actually were some of the ones that did not depress me. Well, okay, Tamora Pierce's Tortall series does have characters who are not white, but I remember particularly going out of my way to find books about non-white characters... just, I didn't find as much of that in SFF, sadly. Oh! Octavia Butler. I LOVED her Parables set, but I read those as an older teen, and it's not as relevant to my personal experience. I have always tended to go out of my way to read about people "not like me" -- I do not understand the folks who don't, especially when said people read tons of books about aliens and fantasy non-humans.
Although I'll always have a soft spot for Lackey's Native American-esque characters, even though I know they're problematic -- as a kid with Native heritage, who had our history and my great-grandfather's spiritual teachings passed down, finding any sort of even fantasy Native Americans was pretty major, too. I just didn't talk about that as much in the main post since it was already long enough, LOL.
Yes, so many of my attitudes were formed by SFF, and I particularly tended to go out of my way to read books by women authors (or with women or girl main characters; you know those idiots who keep saying things like "We need to focus on books for boys, because girls will read about boys but boys won't read about girls"? Yeah, I'm the girl who doesn't exist, apparently; it's VERY unusual for me to read a book about a male MC and generally even then I will ONLY read it if there is a strong supporting female cast. This also has the side effect of weeding out a lot of the grimdark fantasy full of rape...).
I read a lot of Marion Zimmer Bradley and her contemporaries and other authors in her particular group, considering she was a mentor to many. While she certainly wasn't perfect, she introduced me to a lot of feminist thought, and honestly was my first introduction, and she definitely had issues of reproductive rights in her stories. I mean, that is at least one thing my family was staunch about -- they are solidly pro-choice. I have never seen my parents so angry as when we were harassed on the street by an anti-choice group that shoved signs in our faces, yelled at us, tried to prevent us from getting in our car. Seriously, it was not something that was talked about overmuch, but the ranting was ... enlightening.
But yes, as far as abuse -- the way you put it, "They got out. And, eventually, so did I" is dead on. That is the same for me. Watching characters I grew to care about get out of abusive situations really made a huge difference for me. It gave me hope that one day, I too, would get out. (Except I wouldn't get a white horse... You know how kids who grew up with Harry Potter wanted their invitation to Hogwarts? I wanted my Companion. Or I would have settled for Waarl. :D)
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