Discworld books are a bit like Ghibli movies in that they make me want to be a better person, but in a very different way. Ghibli movies make me want to start an herb garden and learn to paint and go have an adventure. Discworld books make me want to FIGHT. Discworld makes me want to stand up when the injustices of the world have knocked me down, makes me believe that my voice and my power matter, because they are MINE, and I have to use them to change the world for the better. I have to look at these terrible things in life and fight back against them with all I have, because that is my responsibility as a human being. You have to try! You can’t give in to hopelessness! And maybe you won’t succeed, but the bit you do still matters! You have to create good where there is none! You have a duty to the world!
I trust big muscled people because I feel like they just want to give me advice on how to live my best life and impart mass amounts of motivation on me
their muscles are filled with compassion
Is this about All Might? Did Midoriya right this?
tbh this post is about Mob Psycho 100
a couple of good lads who want you to succeed, let the Body Improvement club into your heart
“Alana Quick is the best damned sky surgeon in Heliodor City, but repairing starship engines barely pays the bills. When the desperate crew of a cargo vessel stops by her shipyard looking for her spiritually advanced sister Nova, Alana stows away. Maybe her boldness will land her a long-term gig on the crew.
But the Tangled Axon proves to be more than star-watching and plasma coils. The chief engineer thinks he’s a wolf. The pilot fades in and out of existence. The captain is all blond hair, boots, and ego … and Alana can’t keep her eyes off her. But there’s little time for romance: Nova’s in danger and someone will do anything–even destroying planets–to get their hands on her.”
Jacqueline Koyanagi was born in Ohio to a Japanese-Southern-American family, eventually moved to Georgia, and earned a degree in anthropology with a minor in religion. Her stories feature queer women of color, folks with disabilities, neuroatypical characters, and diverse relationship styles, because she grew tired of not seeing enough of herself and the people she loves reflected in genre fiction. She now resides in Colorado where she weaves all manner of things, including stories, chainmaille jewelry, and a life with her partners and dog.
o human star is scifi and gay and one of the mcs is trans
go get a roomie is a comc made up of four page strips and it’s so good (the first like 3 chapters are mostly lesbian sex jokes but eventually there’s a plot)
(Since queer representation remains relatively scarce in this genre, note that while many of these books DO discuss queer themes at length — and that all contain at least one queer character — a few do not revolve around said character(s) and/or are not centered around queer themes.)
In addition, goodreads.com has shelves for just about everything; one look at its Queer, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender ones can uncover some of the many books I couldn’t fit on this one post!
The bolded sections represent quotes from the criticism he received. All the z-snaps are in order.
Your characters are unrealistic stereotpyes of political correctness. Is it really necessary for the sake of popular sensibilities to have in a fantasy what we have in the real world? I read fantasy to get away from politically correct cliches.
God, yes! If there’s one thing fantasy is just crawling with these days it’s widowed black middle-aged pirate moms.
Real sea pirates could not be controlled by women, they were vicous rapits and murderers and I am sorry to say it was a man’s world. It is unrealistic wish fulfilment for you and your readers to have so many female pirates, especially if you want to be politically correct about it!
First, I will pretend that your last sentence makes sense because it will save us all time. Second, now you’re pissing me off.
You know what? Yeah, Zamira Drakasha, middle-aged pirate mother of two, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. I realized this as she was evolving on the page, and you know what? I fucking embrace it.
Why shouldn’t middle-aged mothers get a wish-fulfillment character, you sad little bigot? Everyone else does. H.L. Mencken once wrote that “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” I can’t think of anyone to whom that applies more than my own mom, and the mothers on my friends list, with the incredible demands on time and spirit they face in their efforts to raise their kids, preserve their families, and save their own identity/sanity into the bargain.
Shit yes, Zamira Drakasha, leaping across the gap between burning ships with twin sabers in hand to kick in some fucking heads and sail off into the sunset with her toddlers in her arms and a hold full of plundered goods, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy from hell. I offer her up on a silver platter with a fucking bow on top; I hope she amuses and delights. In my fictional world, opportunities for butt-kicking do not cease merely because one isn’t a beautiful teenager or a muscle-wrapped font of testosterone. In my fictional universe, the main characters are a fat ugly guy and a skinny forgettable guy, with a supporting cast that includes “SBF, 41, nonsmoker, 2 children, buccaneer of no fixed abode, seeks unescorted merchant for light boarding, heavy plunder.”
You don’t like it? Don’t buy my books. Get your own fictional universe. Your cabbage-water vision of worldbuilding bores me to tears.
As for the “man’s world” thing, religious sentiments and gender prejudices flow differently in this fictional world. Women are regarded as luckier, better sailors than men. It’s regarded as folly for a ship to put to sea without at least one female officer; there are several all-female naval military traditions dating back centuries, and Drakasha comes from one of them. As for claims to “realism,” your complaint is of a kind with those from bigoted hand-wringers who whine that women can’t possibly fly combat aircraft, command naval vessels, serve in infantry actions, work as firefighters, police officers, etc. despite the fact that they do all of those things– and are, for a certainty, doing them all somewhere at this very minute. Tell me that a fit fortyish woman with 25+ years of experience at sea and several decades of live bladefighting practice under her belt isn’t a threat when she runs across the deck toward you, and I’ll tell you something in return– you’re gonna die of stab wounds.
What you’re really complaining about isn’t the fact that my fiction violates some objective “reality,” but rather that it impinges upon your sad, dull little conception of how the world works. I’m not beholden to the confirmation of your prejudices; to be perfectly frank, the prospect of confining the female characters in my story to placid, helpless secondary places in the narrative is so goddamn boring that I would rather not write at all. I’m not writing history, I’m writing speculative fiction. Nobody’s going to force you to buy it. Conversely, you’re cracked if you think you can persuade me not to write about what amuses and excites me in deference to your vision, because your vision fucking sucks.
I do not expect to change your mind but i hope that you will at least consider that I and others will not be buying your work because of these issues. I have been reading science fiction and fantasy for years and i know that I speak for a great many people. I hope you might stop to think about the sales you will lose because you want to bring your political corectness and foul language into fantasy. if we wanted those things we could go to the movies. Think about this!
Thank you for your sentiments. I offer you in exchange this engraved invitation to go piss up a hill, suitable for framing.
Here follows is a non-comprehensive list of historical female pirates and sailors, women of color first:
Ching Shih (1775-1844): controlled south China seas, had 80,000-man fleet at her disposal, outlawed rape, extorted retirement package from the Chinese government.
Sayyida al-Hurra (1482-1562): Pirate queen of Morocco who bedeviled Portuguese and Spanish fleets after being kicked out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in her youth.
Jeanne de Clisson (c.1300-1359): burnt down much of the Normandy coast and sank a ton of ships after her husband was killed.
Charlotte Badger (1778-?): Australian convict/single mom who took over ship, sailed to New Zealand, settled with Maori tribe.
In conclusion: read a goddamn book, critic person.
“
Your cabbage-water vision of worldbuilding bores me to tears. “
“
I offer you in exchange this engraved invitation to go piss up a hill, suitable for framing.
“
I didn’t know this writer until now and this post was enough to make me a fan
Does anyone else really want to read his books now?
You definitely do. I bought these and they sat on my shelf for like a year before I finally got round to reading them and this was a mistake, you must read the Gentlemen Bastard series immediately.
And yes black middle-aged mum pirate is pretty great.
Okay, for a general overview of (young) medieval women, the culture, and some ideas/misconceptions/cultural parameters about them, I do recommend Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270-1540. By its nature/title, it obviously focuses more on England, but France was not so terribly different culture-wise at this point, and this is around the time that most people think of as “medieval.” This book is fairly readable as academic texts go, and absolutely worth going through just for some basics.
In terms of warrior women, I will say that they are very much still the exception rather than the rule. They did exist, but there isn’t some grand conspiracy to cover up legions of Amazons and so forth (though it would be fun if there were). I work on the crusades, and one of the interesting questions is how much women participated as active combatants, if at all. Natasha Hodgson’s Women, Crusading, and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative covers some of this, though she mainly explores the interesting tensions about the presence/existence of women for crusade armies, and their relationships to crusaders – i.e. how much could women participate in a movement that by its nature was designed for arms-bearing knights, i.e. men? Helen Nicholson also has an article, Women on the Third Crusade, that deals with some cases of reported warrior women during said crusade (1187-1192) and what motives chroniclers, especially Muslim ones, might have for reporting or exaggerating their presence. This is a bit earlier, as the crusades are generally accepted to have taken place between 1095-1291, but still medieval.
In terms of French warrior women to look into, I’d say definitely Jeanne de Clisson (that is her wikipedia page, but there are links/references for further reading). She was a fourteenth-century French female pirate called the “Lioness of Brittany,” which if you ask me, is awesome, and everyone knows about Joan of Arc already. In this vein, Grace O’Malley was a 16th-century clan chieftain/pirate captain who met with Queen Elizabeth I; she couldn’t speak English and Elizabeth couldn’t speak Irish, so they communicated in Latin (also, in my opinion, awesome). She also had a badass nickname, “the Sea Queen of Connacht.” Not French, obviously, but yes.
Maud (or Matilda) de Braose was a 12th/13th-century Anglo-French noblewoman known for her military skill (in defending castles for her husband/leading armies in the field). She was supposedly exceptionally tall and also wore armor in fighting, and her death and that of her son (starvation by King John) so outraged the English nobility that there is a clause in the Magna Carta specifically banning such treatment of the king’s subjects. She also made enough of an impression that she is a Welsh folk legend.
Matilda of Tuscany is another woman (late 11th century) remembered for military accomplishments and formidable political prowess, especially in the Investiture Conflict.
Anyway, I think this is most of what I can come up with off the top of my head, but hopefully that is a useful start!
Now that I’ve seen two separate posts about Motor Crushhere and here in the space of a day, I’m taking that as a sign to get off my rump and post about ISOLA, an upcoming comic by the same writer, @brendenfletcher, and Gotham Academy artist @karlkerschl.
Using inspiration from Princess Mononoke, the story is about a queen turned into a tiger and the journey she and her Captain of the Guard (and perhaps more) take to return her form. As you can see from the teaser images, the release has moved from Spring 2017 to Summer 2017 and is now slated for Late 2017 so we just gotta wait and make sure there’s demand when it does come out.
Here are some panels from the prologue, which was published at the end of each of the first Motor Crush issues:
nomad-hermit 