Sam and frodo gay brokeback mountain12/10/2023 ![]() ![]() In terms of the The Steel Remains, I have never really read anything else where homosexuality in SF/fantasy is full-on. Or do you think gay does not exist in a hostile, prejudicial environment and, consequently, think there is nothing to whitewash? In short: a contrast between fiction that explores the problem and fiction that whitewashes it. Fiction that ignores this reality may serve to entertain or to hold up an ideal (or some other purpose I'm not thinking of just now), but such fiction is not exploring the genuine experience of most homosexuals. Rather, what is behind my criteria is simply that the experience of most gay people is the experience of living in a prejudiced, often hostile world. Hooray for that gay person and what's the location? Because a lot of people I know would like to live there, too. My use of "genuine" in this context was meant to be a modifier to the fictional treatment and NOT to imply that a gay person who does not experience the world as prejudicial is therefore not an authentically gay person. What I think is that in the 21st century and certainly in, not least, America, gay does exist in a prejudicial environment. Although I could see how a reasonable person might interpret what I wrote that way. Vorbis wrote: So Louis you believe Gay is only defined by the character existing in a prejudical enviroment? ![]() Oh, and Louis (plot spoiler, for those who haven't read it and might like to): That's not to say that such details haven't been central in other books (I'm sure I've read merely a tiny fraction of the available stuff out there) but I'm not really aware of it if it is. That's not to say that homosexuality hasn't arisen as a subject, but it really has not been as central to the plot as it is in this book (oh, and one of the other protagonists is a drug-abusing lesbian, though she gets no action as such in this volume) nor is it dealt with in such a muscular fashion. It's a pretty impressive piece of characterisation, especially since Morgan is (as far as I know) a heterosexual man, and it is something that is pretty unprecedented in anything else I have ever read in the genre. It's not judgemental, and the character feels both male, masculine (he's a master swordsman, not a pansy) and authentically gay in a (as Louis puts it) "I like dick - deal with it" sort of way. In The Steel Remains, there are several scenes of full-on gay sex, with the hero banging various males in explicit detail (Morgan's hetero sex scenes in his other books are very full-on too - personally, I find it a bit embarrassing but actually the gay ones in The Steel Remains make a lot more sense in setting character in the context of this book than some of the others, which just seemed sorta slung in there for jollies). In a genre where heterosexual sex scenes are certainly not unknown, gay sex is often glossed over. However, there isn't much more than "holding hands" in it (and the main character is definately hetero) and little more than an incidental detail. Another example are the Lion of Macedon/Dark Prince series of books by David Gemmell, set in the Hellenistic period of Greece, where some of the secondary characters are gay warriors (of Corinth, if I recall) where their homosexual bonds are thought to make them fight better for each other. It might be alluded to, it might be mentioned. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |