Kamog!
So there's this anthology called She Walks In Shadows, co-edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. It's composed of stories about female characters, and all, as far as I'm aware, by women writers. I haven't had a chance to post about it yet, but it's coming out today, and it looks fantastic. I'm getting a copy as soon as possible.
This is all the more welcome because the one downside of my experience at Necronomicon back in August was realizing that fandom and weird fiction are sausage parties. Men and boys were in the majority at the con, and the bulk of the weird fiction I read these days (not that I read a lot of it) seems to often come from male authors and be eternally focused on male characters. I need something new and different.
You'd think that with the nature of the weird, there would BE more new-and-different stories already, but no: I get story after story following tired old tropes. "Male nerd does a thing, in a world where only men have dialogue" is popular, as is "Men are scholars and wizards and get to have personality traits, also there's one woman and she's a vamp and a sorceress." I enjoyed a story on Tor.com the other day, "The Madonna of the Abattoir" by Anne M. Pillsworth. It's an excellent story, don't get me wrong, the author can render a lot of atmosphere with only a few words, but great googly-moogly am I sick of stories where men get to have personalities outside of their sexuality, while there's one woman who is there to be a seductress.
(Also, the characters in "The Madonna of the Abattoir" don't seem to see a distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, but then again I know a lot of people in real life who can't tell the difference either.)
I was pleased to note that the editors' original open call guidelines for submissions to this anthology specified:
"To avoid the Asenath effect (that means every character in the anthology would be Asenath Waite), we asked the authors who are contributing stories to pick a different character from a Lovecraft story. While you are not bound to these restrictions, we suggest that if you use a character from Lovecraft’s fiction, you avoid the usual suspects (Asenath and Lavinia)."
Everybody wants to write Asenath Waite! That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I love Asenath Waite so, so much. (I'd be the worst offender if I'd ever managed to complete a story for consideration.) Asenath is one of my favorite villains of all time. (Ermagahd SPOILERS.) Even in horror that has female characters, women seem to exist to be acted upon, to react while male villains or heroes act and make decisions. Women are sponges. And just as you're getting frustrated and yearning for a woman to be dynamic for good or for evil, for a woman to DO something instead of be passive or victimized or a nonentity or one-dimensional vamp, along comes Asenath Waite and gets a long way very fast with her plans.(Yeah, I know she's secretly her own father. Shut up let me have my dreams.)
She's my poster girl for pragmatic villainy, exploiting everybody's assumptions as thoroughly as she can. And, as far as we know, she gets away with everything. [Fritz Leiber wrote a short story which I believe is called "To Arkham and the Stars" in which it is mentioned that Upton was tried and released with a finding of justifiable homicide. That's a salve to the feelings of people who were put through the wringer by "The Thing on the Doorstep," but Leiber's word carries no more weight than anyone else's.]
(People call this story misogynist. I don't know why. Lovecraft has a ton of problems, but sexism isn't a big one, by me. Racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, snobbery--those are story elements that Lovecraft the person stands behind. He doesn't sledgehammer the audience with sexism in the same way. You can quote the stuff about women's brains being "inferior" all you want--it's Asenath Waite the character saying that, at a point when she's secretly Ephraim Waite, who is, y'know, a horrible person. As Arthur Conan Doyle put it, "Please grasp this fact with your cerebral tentacle;/ The doll and its maker are never identical." For my money, there's more sexism in "The Shadow over Innsmouth," where the whole town smells like fish, if you know what I mean, and there's subtext about sea monster women who want to use your men for gross rapey sex. You still don't get to meet sea monster women; they're just there in the calculated omissions.)
I beg your pardon. I quite forgot myself. This was and is a plug for She Walks In Shadows. I am a tad excited.
This is all the more welcome because the one downside of my experience at Necronomicon back in August was realizing that fandom and weird fiction are sausage parties. Men and boys were in the majority at the con, and the bulk of the weird fiction I read these days (not that I read a lot of it) seems to often come from male authors and be eternally focused on male characters. I need something new and different.
You'd think that with the nature of the weird, there would BE more new-and-different stories already, but no: I get story after story following tired old tropes. "Male nerd does a thing, in a world where only men have dialogue" is popular, as is "Men are scholars and wizards and get to have personality traits, also there's one woman and she's a vamp and a sorceress." I enjoyed a story on Tor.com the other day, "The Madonna of the Abattoir" by Anne M. Pillsworth. It's an excellent story, don't get me wrong, the author can render a lot of atmosphere with only a few words, but great googly-moogly am I sick of stories where men get to have personalities outside of their sexuality, while there's one woman who is there to be a seductress.
(Also, the characters in "The Madonna of the Abattoir" don't seem to see a distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, but then again I know a lot of people in real life who can't tell the difference either.)
I was pleased to note that the editors' original open call guidelines for submissions to this anthology specified:
"To avoid the Asenath effect (that means every character in the anthology would be Asenath Waite), we asked the authors who are contributing stories to pick a different character from a Lovecraft story. While you are not bound to these restrictions, we suggest that if you use a character from Lovecraft’s fiction, you avoid the usual suspects (Asenath and Lavinia)."
Everybody wants to write Asenath Waite! That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I love Asenath Waite so, so much. (I'd be the worst offender if I'd ever managed to complete a story for consideration.) Asenath is one of my favorite villains of all time. (Ermagahd SPOILERS.) Even in horror that has female characters, women seem to exist to be acted upon, to react while male villains or heroes act and make decisions. Women are sponges. And just as you're getting frustrated and yearning for a woman to be dynamic for good or for evil, for a woman to DO something instead of be passive or victimized or a nonentity or one-dimensional vamp, along comes Asenath Waite and gets a long way very fast with her plans.(Yeah, I know she's secretly her own father. Shut up let me have my dreams.)
She's my poster girl for pragmatic villainy, exploiting everybody's assumptions as thoroughly as she can. And, as far as we know, she gets away with everything. [Fritz Leiber wrote a short story which I believe is called "To Arkham and the Stars" in which it is mentioned that Upton was tried and released with a finding of justifiable homicide. That's a salve to the feelings of people who were put through the wringer by "The Thing on the Doorstep," but Leiber's word carries no more weight than anyone else's.]
(People call this story misogynist. I don't know why. Lovecraft has a ton of problems, but sexism isn't a big one, by me. Racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, snobbery--those are story elements that Lovecraft the person stands behind. He doesn't sledgehammer the audience with sexism in the same way. You can quote the stuff about women's brains being "inferior" all you want--it's Asenath Waite the character saying that, at a point when she's secretly Ephraim Waite, who is, y'know, a horrible person. As Arthur Conan Doyle put it, "Please grasp this fact with your cerebral tentacle;/ The doll and its maker are never identical." For my money, there's more sexism in "The Shadow over Innsmouth," where the whole town smells like fish, if you know what I mean, and there's subtext about sea monster women who want to use your men for gross rapey sex. You still don't get to meet sea monster women; they're just there in the calculated omissions.)
I beg your pardon. I quite forgot myself. This was and is a plug for She Walks In Shadows. I am a tad excited.