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Sunday 17 March 2013

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In Fiction No One Is Forced By Circumstance
When a book or TV show is fiction, it's made up. Everything within it is created.

I can see your bemused expressions now - why have I started stating the obvious? Well, by a lot of the excuses people make for various issues we criticise in books, it feels like some people aren't grasping it.

In particular, this happens when we describe a character as being problematic in some way - maybe they're a stereotype or trope, maybe they have bigoted attitudes, maybe their relationships are a hot mess of problems, maybe everything's just a wall-to-wall hot mess. But we describe the problematic issue and someone counters "but X forces them to be/do/think that!"

But this forgets that "X", whatever X is, only exists because the author put it there. The author isn't a historian presenting their research, or an anthropologist loyally relating their observations. The author is the storyteller, the author is the one who built this world, every aspect for it, and if they have created an element that "justifies" some prejudiced, bigoted or problematic element then that has been their choice to do so. We cannot pretend or act like this is out of their hands.

There are so many examples of this - let's take werewolves. Female werewolves are often super-duper rare - making the few female werewolves highly desirable and hunted by the male werewolves (like Elena in Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld) or making female werewolves so rare they have a very male dominated cast (Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson Series) or there just cannot be female werewolves for REASONS - which are probably related to werewolves being so traditionally masculine and aggressive and hairy (Eileen Wilk's World of the Lupi series, Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series).

The scarcity of female werewolves is used over and over as a justification for women living in a sea of men, or for women being super-precious and hunted or needing lots of aggressive "protection". It's not a trope! It's just the rarity of women! It's just how werewolves ARE!

Except for the fact that werewolves are not actually real. If this is just how the werewolves are, then it is because the author chose to make them that way - you can't excuse a problematic story element by creating a problematic world element.

We see this repeatedly when supernatural Alpha Male "heroes" are aggressive, violent, angry, "protective" and controlling, the excuse is usually that this is part of their nature. Werewolves are possessive and violent. The vampires latch on to their mates (in the Black Dagger Brotherhood) or can't control themselves (Twilight). There are any number of abusive tropes that are justified because the man gets a supernatural pass - the abusive nature is part of their werewolf/vampire/weremanatee nature.

These creatures are not real, these creatures do not have to be this way. Their natures are conscious choices on the part of the writer and, as such, cannot be a "get out" of tropes they embody.

While supernatural creatures are a classic example, we can also see a lot of similar excuses arising from the cultures created in the books.

Again, Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson series has the werewolf pack that is deeply misogynist and homophobic. Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments Series has a homophobic society. George R R Martin's Song of Ice and Fire has a society that is such a hot mess of misogyny that I don't think they have any industry other than prostitution. It's the first society ever whose economy is entirely reliant on war on sex-work. Again, all of these cultural bigotries are choices of the author - these are fictional societies, subcultures and often entirely new worlds with new religions (and dragons); there is nothing forcing the bigotries of our world onto their societies beyond authorial choice.

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