The Sword and Laser discussion

Arkady Martine (pen name) is a queer author, so it was thematically appropriate to read this during Pride Month.

I don’t actually recall any LGBTQ themes in the book, which means they didn’t jump out at me. Which is how it should be. My gay and lesbian friends are boringly normal. An accountant, a therapist, a high school math teacher.

But in fiction there’s so much extreme — and extremely weird — behavior by gay characters, particularly in the SFF I’ve read, that it borders on deviance. Which I think plays into the narrative by far-right conservatives, but it’s not incumbent on authors to be anything other than their authentic selves, despite how they might be perceived.

But a lot of these authors are white men playing at lesbian erotica (wlw), which is problematic at best. (cough*samsykes*cough) However, there are some women and gay authors who also do this, and I always call them out in my reviews because I think the apparent deviance (emphasis on the “apparent”) is the result of plain old-fashioned bad writing.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read a book where there’s a scene of bloody violence and the reaction by the gay character is to have sex immediately after. Often right next to the dead bodies. There’s no trauma, no moment to catch their breath, just straight up bangin’. It’s starting to become a cliche.

I get that the reaction some people have to death is to have life-affirming sex, but not AT THE SCENE OF A MASSACRE. These authors aren’t using their senses to inhabit the scene. You don’t watch your best friend get his face ripped off by killer mermaids and then make Star Trek jokes while sexing up the girl you just met. (I didn’t make that silliness up. That actually happens in Into the Drowning Deep.) In Black Leopard, Red Wolf this kind of thing also occurs.

So it’s nice to read a book like this one where that type of nonsense doesn’t happen.

To me the queer theme is that it is a normal part of life that is not worth mentioning (similar to Ancillary Justice).

It is a shame that this can still be considered a radical world view.

I was hoping we would have a post about sexually in MCE.

when I met my wife she was bisexual, well I guess she still is just in a monogamist relationship. we have alot of friend who are LGBTQ and yeah they will joke around about it sometimes but really don't let control the conversation nor is it their only defining characteristics. I like this portrayal and think it's accurate.

I can only relate through association. but there is a fine line between representation and tolkenism. I wonder how some of our LGBTQ members would like to be represented.

I mean, Mahit did have some throbbing biological urges as regards (view spoiler)[Three Seagrass (hide spoiler)], amongst others, and did even kind of act upon them once or twice ...

I really enjoyed the cute almost-romance in A Memory Called Empire.

If you want to see a controversial SFF book with LGBTQ content, check out Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat and read the current top-rated review which calls it ‘disgusting’. Personally I enjoyed that book but I’d hesitate to call it good representation - it’s gay BDSM erotica by a straight (?) female author with a palace intrigue story attached. I don’t think it’s in any way representative of real queer people’s lives, nor is it supposed to be.

More recently there’s Docile by K.M. Szpara, a near-future SF book by a queer and trans writer (that’s how he’s described in his GR profile) with what sounds like broadly similar themes to Captive Prince. I haven’t read this one myself yet so I can’t comment directly on it, but I know it’s attracted a bit of controversy too over the whole ‘sexy slavery’ concept and whether it can ever be ethical to write about things like coerced consent in a titillating way.

Personally, I think there’s room in SFF for all kinds of content, queer and straight, erotic and demure, weird and vanilla. It’s good to see that we’re now at a point where an SF novel by a queer writer can have a cute low-key queer romantic subplot without that needing to be A Big Deal in any way. But sometimes it’s good to have a bit of weird too.

Trike wrote: "I don’t know how many times I’ve read a book where there’s a scene of bloody violence and the reaction by the gay character is to have sex immediately after. Often right next to the dead bodies. There’s no trauma, no moment to catch their breath, just straight up bangin’. It’s starting to become a cliche."

To be fair, this kind of scene shows up in PNR (paranormal romance, basically UF with bangin'), too. Juxtaposition of sex and injury/death is all right in junk food/popcorn reading--although for me it brings on a sense of dissonance or absurdity--but if the author is aiming for being Serious Business, they'd best avoid it.