Comments | areyououtthere: I am one very happy LeGuin nerd

areyououtthere

I am one very happy LeGuin nerd

Jan 06, 2009 01:10

Somebody has written Left Hand of Darkness fanfic that actually reads like LeGuin.

You have no idea how surprising this is. I've done thorough google-scouring before just to prove to myself that Left Hand fic doesn't exist...because I was convinced that somebody out there would totally ruin the spirit of the story by writing Genly/Estraven porn. ( Read more... )

Comments 5

shrewreader January 6 2009, 13:35:12 UTC

Oooh, thanks for the recc!!

In return, try the Vane / Wimsey Dorothy L. Sayers section -- I highly recommend Tea & Tannenbaum. Also wonderfully in voice of DLS. Must go and (a) re-read, (b) locate 9 Tailors and (c) finish re-reading Busman's Honeymoon.

crystalpyramid January 6 2009, 14:36:51 UTC

Is it blatant sexism? I saw it more as painful realism, I think.

matt_rah January 6 2009, 16:51:22 UTC

Dammit, now I'm gonna have to re-read PST so that I can talk about it with the two of you, aren't I?

Matt

areyououtthere January 7 2009, 05:20:51 UTC

It's not so much the fact that she looked at the wings that was sexist, it's Mieville's explanation for why she does it. I'm paraphrasing here since I don't own the book, but I believe it was something along the lines of "she was an artist, and she'd been deprived of anything pretty, so she looked she was warned not to." Feels like awfully weak characterization to me, for a character who was pretty smart throughout the rest of the book, with more than a hint of stereotypical, overly emotional impulsive woman thrown in. (You could possibly argue her taking the job with Motley in the first place was dumb and foreshadows her later stupidity, but I maintain that that was a calculated risk.)

Also, to steal a line learned from one of matt_rah's friends, don't kill (or in this case severely disable) a character unless their death/disablement adds more to the story than their life did. In this case, I don't think Lin's later condition adds much to the story--even if she'd gotten out of Motley's house without looking at the wings, she'd still be ( ... )

crystalpyramid January 7 2009, 13:02:13 UTC

You're right that that's not a very good line. On the other hand, in the circumstances, I'm pretty sure I'd look too, for most of the same reasons. It's the Orpheus-and-Euridice thing, the pillar-of-salt thing, something we're told is stereotypically feminine, this failure to trust males enough when it really matters and there's no other information. Isn't that a human trait, not a female one? I always hated those myths because I knew I'd be the one to look, simply out of curiosity ( ... )