Hello, all.

[krait]

I've been fannish lately, but not gregarious. It seems hard to write for some reason, be it fic or blog entries. Sorry.


What have I been doing lately? Mainly reading a lot of Homestuck fic (though right now I have two HP fics queued up as my next entertainment) and rereading Cherryh's Foreigner series (starting from the second book). A couple of weeks ago, I read Protector, and found that I couldn't stand the wait to discover what happens next, so I went into the bookshop a couple weeks ago and bought Peacemaker in hardback and devoured it the same day.

The sign of a great author: she gets me to pay hardback prices to follow a plot that I normally wouldn't touch with a stick! :D A plotline heavily involving children would normally send me running, but not in this case; I adore Cajeiri and his human associates and their shenanigans. Give me more!

It's always interesting rereading a series; it gives one time to notice things that went unnoticed before, both good and bad. This read-through, I've been surprised to see how many of the plot elements of later books (Murini's rebellion, and the politics within the Guilds) are foreshadowed all the way back in the early books! Very clever advance plotting, or else a deft skill for drawing up stray details and turning them into something deliberate.

I've also been catching myself noticing keenly the female characters, and the presentations or lacks thereof. So far Ginny Kroger is hands-down the most positive one to appear, beyond Ilisidi, but the competition is pretty limited. I find I'm rather disappointed in this, and I sure hope Kroger turns up in future books, because I enjoy her (and her no-nonsense refusal to be charmed by Bren's diplomatic veneer) rather a lot. Somewhat disappointing: humans in this universe have no artificial gestation technology. I'd forgotten all about Foreigner's lack on this front, till I hit Precursor and it comes up: Women are almost sacred to the ship-humans, because of their reproductive capabilities... so much so that they apparently had to fight for the right to keep working jobs at one point. Meh to that. But good on you, ship-ladies! Fight those bastards! Don't go the way of Barrayar, or Grayson, or Heorot, or any of the far-too-many sci-fi worlds I've encountered that takes defaulting to patriarchy as a given!


So: what have you been doing lately?

Comments

[cheyinka]

Ginny and I guess Jago, and then that's it, yeah.

There's Antaro and Veijico, but they're adolescents and not really gendered to Cajeiri, as far as I can tell.

Then there's Barb, who apparently is great for Toby and super-helpful on a boat but we never see her being awesome.

Damiri might be due for a portrayal-positivity-increase now that she's given birth and gotten the State of the World lecture from Bren? Maybe? We can hope?

[krait]

Female characters, with whom Bren has more than passing interaction: Barb, Ilisidi, his mother (do we know her name?), Jago, Ginny, Madam Saidin, and just recently Damiri and Irene... Captain Sabin? Veijico? Various female servants? Jill? Direiso? Nokhada?! >.<

Not so very many to choose from, alas, given how many books we're dealing with; and as you noted about Barb, too many of them we get telling but not showing. Sabin must be a pretty awesome captain, given her shenanigans during the days after Ramirez' assassination; but we only get Bren's guesses as to how that went down, so we never really see her in action during what must have been an extremely emotionally difficult time for her.

I'm secretly hoping that both Damiri and her new hairdresser will feature somewhat more prominently from now on. :D

And yeah, I don't think Veijico is really "gendered" to either Cajeiri (who appears to be a little too young for such concerns) or to Bren (who's too adult to really regard a teenager that way). She's just half of a team, Antaro-and-Veijico, rather than a distinct person to either of them.

To be somewhat fair -- the structure of the world makes it very difficult for any Mospheiran women to make the cut, because the plot requires Bren stuck on the other side of the strait; so the best we're going to get is Bren glimpsing/realising via letters about Jill finally standing up for herself and her kids and developing a spine, and Barb becoming a helpful and supportive partner in her boyfriend's business/espionage. (And also to be fair, some of the negatives are presented this way, too -- we never see Bren's mother except through letters and his own estimations of her motives.)

But there's far less excuse for ship-women and atevi women! I need more than Ilisidi and Jago, please, as amazing and lovely and awesome as they are. Reading Peacemaker, I cringed every time Irene was the one to 'fail' or be the worst at something; and I cheered so hard when she was so great with Damiri! Let's have some pseudo-mother-daughter bonding, yes, please! :D

(Aaaand speaking of Cajeiri being too young for some perceptions... did anyone else get the idea that some of Irene's mother's fears/attacks regarding Cajeiri were sexual in nature? Which is, well. If a six-foot "boy" was constantly hanging around my daughter, I'm sure it would be at the back of my mind, so I have a hard time hating her for it, but still. Any interaction with the others in the group would surely have put her mind to rest? Artur and Gene are pretty clearly in the same age bracket as Irene, and they were almost always present, too!) Wonder if she's going to change her tune at any point, or just fade into the background and disappear? It'd be nice if she didn't..

[cheyinka]

It's Lucasi who's Veijico's sibling and partner (I can't remember Antaro's brother's name), but, yeah, she's just part of Cajeiri's aishid, to... everyone, really. Which keeps both of them from being awesome as a young woman, which is unfortunate. (Veijico especially, because she's the one who stayed with Barb!)

And yeah, I can see why we don't see any human women being awesome except Ginny - but there was a chance with Jase's counterpart, and that I can't remember her name is pretty telling, and while she only got told about rather than shown, too, she didn't come off all that awesome in the telling.

That it was always Irene struggling or being afraid was pretty frustrating, though I agree that the scene with Damiri was fantastic - more of that would be amazing. It was nice that Irene was the most adept with languages, at least? But I think it'll be Gene who tries to stay behind, not both Gene and Irene. :|

I'd love to see more of Irene's mother, especially if she figures out that it's Jase who's kept her (and Gene's and Artur's parents) from going to Maudit.

[krait]

It's Lucasi

Bother! I knew that; I even typed it out, and then "corrected" it because my brain went offline for a minute there. Definitely, though; she never gets to act separately, really, so they're an awesome security (in the making) pair, but not so much a distinct awesome female character.

Some Veijico-Barb interaction would have been lovely. Let's have a Bechdel test pass, combined with a chance to let two ladies separately show their areas of expertise! Yes, please. Not to mention lots of language-barrier and culture-clash fun, which I eat up with a spoon.

DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED on Yolanda Mercheson! Rereading Precursor has just rubbed my nose in exactly how much letdown is involved there. At long last we're presented with a character who could've developed into a female Bren -- someone who's facing similar challenges of cultural alienation and heavy pressure to learn fast-faster-fastest for the good of everything she loves! ...And it not only gets stuffed under the "let me tell you about that, but never show it" rug, it only gets worse later when we realise that it's entirely possible she didn't just get screwed over by the Mospheirans' wacky politics, she very well might have screwed up badly of her own doing while covering for Bren's absence. Urgh.

I love Bren to death and in general I love the series, but I hate how poor Yolanda got the shaft. And then just kept getting shafted, from "had to be smuggled off the island by Shawn & Toby" to "the promotion she wanted went to Jase instead who didn't even want it" to "oh, and by the way, maybe she's partly to blame for why Murini was able to destablilise everything and move in"! Egad.

After all that, she'd better make Captain. Just to make up for it. *pats her consolingly*

Irene's mother would be a nice thing to see developed, too; we have all these tantalising hints that she's under some kind of pressure, but no idea who. If you're reading this series, let's face it, you like political intrigue, so that's a really intriguing thing that I'd like to see: who are the players on the station/ship, and how does leverage work there? We got to see some of that in Precursor, with the "passive resistance" and indirect choices made by the crew when the Captains are having a quiet civil war; let's see how it goes with Reunioners thrown into the mix!

Besides, what a great parallel to Damiri's own concerns for her daughter -- let's get some cross-species comparison going on with regard to parenting (an area of atevi life that's still Here Be Dragonnes for every single human alive, despite all Bren's advances in interspecies relations!) and even just some variation between individuals! After all, Irene's mother is in a very different position; her daughter is a different age; and the stresses on both of them are vastly dissimilar.

We've seen something of ship-dweller psychology, first through Jase and then through the mutiny and Bren's travels to Reunion; all the weird and alarming ways they're not like what Bren instinctively expects, Mospheiran as he is! So show us how Reunion might have taken that base concept and changed it yet again producing felicitous-three human viewpoints instead of dreadful two. Show me how that feels for them, surrounded by the shipfolk that created them, left them, then rescued them at the cost of becoming an ill-regarded subgroup. What's it like for Irene, growing up in that milieu? (Does she have shipfolk friends, too, and is it sometimes just as weird with them as it is with Cajeiri?) What's it like being her mother, living in that environment and watching her daughter try to handle it?

especially if she figures out that it's Jase who's kept her (and Gene's and Artur's parents) from going to Maudit.

I'd love to see that, as well! Jase sure seems to have picked up some charisma stats from his time with Bren; he could find himself with a larger entourage of support than ever if he keeps doing things like that. :D

[cheyinka]

felicitous three human viewpoints
Yes yes yes. Why don't we get to see, say, Geigi commenting on that? That'd be fantastic.

You know what else would be great? Irene trying to get Geigi to invite her mother to tea, so Irene can show her mother that atevi aren't terrifying, and then we could see Irene's mother being awesome. Or even reacting badly, I mean, I just want to see more of Irene's mother. (I especially wanted it when Irene rather than Bjorn was the friend of Cajeiri's whose skin was as dark as an ateva's. Alas.)

Yolanda really feels like a character Cherryh didn't know what to do with, and so she just shuffled her away because it was taking time away from the Beating Bren Up Show. I really, really hope that atevi don't have a custom of the mother retiring into seclusion with the infant for a year or anything, or if they do that the sequel to Peacemaker starts with Damiri's re-emergence.

[pebblerocker]

I started a re-read of Foreigner a couple of months back, but there's one book I'm missing from my collection and I never got to the city to the library which has them all, so it got put on hold. I'll want to buy a copy one day. I think my block on looking for one for sale online was that I get the titles mixed up... do I need Deliverer, Deceiver or Destroyer?

Can't wait to read about Cajeiri's human associates! I last left off at the one where they'd reached the not-so-abandoned station and met the new aliens.