““Horses are of a breed unique to Fantasyland. They are capable of galloping full-tilt all day without a rest. Sometimes they do not require food or water. They never cast shoes, go lame or put their hooves down holes, except when the Management deems it necessary, as when the forces of the Dark Lord are only half an hour behind. They never otherwise stumble. Nor do they ever make life difficult for Tourists by biting or kicking their riders or one another. They never resist being mounted or blow out so that their girths slip, or do any of the other things that make horses so chancy in this world. For instance, they never shy and seldom whinny or demand sugar at inopportune moments. But for some reason you cannot hold a conversation while riding them. If you want to say anything to another Tourist (or vice versa), both of you will have to rein to a stop and stand staring out over a valley while you talk. Apart from this inexplicable quirk, horses can be used just like bicycles, and usually are. Much research into how these exemplary animals come to exist has resulted in the following: no mare ever comes into season on the Tour and no stallion ever shows an interest in a mare; and few horses are described as geldings. It therefore seems probable that they breed by pollination. This theory seems to account for everything, since it is clear that the creatures do behave more like vegetables than mammals. Nomads appears to have a monopoly on horse-breeding. They alone possess the secret of how to pollinate them.””
—
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland – Diana Wynne Jones
Saw a discussion about horses in fantasy scenario’s elsewhere, but it got into a fascinating discussion about the evolution of horses and I didn’t want to derail it, but this was too good not to share.
I’m reading this queer anthology and the first story is a fairytale about a queer Latina girl whose anger was so fierce it literally poisoned the rich white men who unfairly captured the transgender soldier she was in love with and my heart is literally bursting I’m going to cry
the second story is about two queer girls who leave their husbands-to-be at the altar and flee together on a boat to become pirates IM FUCKING SCREAMING THIS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF GAY CONTENT I SIGNED UP FOR
okay this is the anthology and it’s entirely written by queer authors and inspired by the stories of real queer teens in history and it’s the most wholesome and epic thing I’ve read in a long while
First of all, “…they were surrounded on all sides by echoes and images of themselves, in a world where image and object had not yet torn themselves apart” is one of the most poetic phrasings I’ve ever heard.
Third, the original opens with: “Every so often, I get the urge to drag someone into a cave, and show them something unspeakable.”
I had another point, but it got lost in the artful prose of this article.
I feel like “every so often, I get the urge to drag someone into a cave and show them something unspeakable” is something that’s okay for a paleolithic cave art expert to say, but like, absolutely no one else
I’ve been on a Discworld re-read for about a year now, and it just struck me how Pterry gets progressively angrier and less subtle about it throughout the series.
Like, we start out nice and easy with Rincewind who’s on some wacky adventures and ha ha ha oh golly that Twoflower sure is silly and the Luggage is epic, where can I get one. Meanwhile Rincewind just wants to live out his boring days as a boring Librarian but is dragged along against his will by an annoying little tourist guy and honestly? Fuck this.
We get the first view of Sam Vimes, and he’s just a drunken beaten down sod who wants to spend his last days as a copper in some dive but oh fuck now he has to fight a dragon and honestly? Fuck this.
The first time we see Granny Weatherwax, she’s just a cranky old woman who has never set foot outside her village but oh fuck now she has to guide this weird girl who should be a witch but is apparently a wizard all the way down to Ankh Morpork and honestly? Fuck this.
Like, these books deal with grumpy, cranky people. But mostly, the early books are a lot of fun. Sure, they have messages about good and evil and the weirdness of the world, and they’re good messages too, but mostly they are just wacky romps through a world that’s just different enough that we can have a good laugh about it without taking things too much to heart.
But then you get to Small Gods, in which organized religion is eviscerated so thorouhgly that if it was human, even the Quisition would say it’s gone a bit too far while at the same time not condemning people having faith which is kind of an important distinction.
You get to Men at Arms and I encourage everybody with an opinion on the Second Amendment to read that one.
You get to Jingo, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal (featuring an evil CEO who is squeezing his own company dry to get to every last penny, not caring one lick about his product or his workers or his customers or anything else and who, coincidentally, works out of Tump Tower. I’m not making this up).
And just when you think, whew, this is getting a bit much but hey, look, he wrote YA as well! And it’s about this cute little girl who wants to be a witch and has help from a lot of rowdy blue little men, this will be fun! A bit of a break from all the anger!
Wrong.
The Tiffany Aching books are the angriest of all. But you know what the great thing is?
The great thing is that Pterry’s anger is the kind of fury that makes you want to get up and do something about it. It upsets you, sure. But it also says It’s up to you to change all of this. And you can change all of this, and even if you can’t. Do it anyway. Because magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
It’s the kind of anger that gives you purpose, and it gives you hope. And that concludes my essay about why the Discworld series is so gloriously cathartic to read when it seems like all the world is going to shit.
So go. Read them, get angry and then get up and fight. Fight for truth. Justice. Freedom. Reasonably priced love and, most importantly, a hard-boiled egg.
The catalyst was a customer — a father of four who had put his hand up the shirt of a busser clearing his family’s table. The busser was so stunned she didn’t report it, but the event sparked a flood of reactions from staff members who’d had similar experiences. At our meeting, women shared stories about harassment from customers and said that when they tried to report it to male managers, they were often ignored because the incidents seemed unthreatening through a male lens.
We decided on a color-coded system in which different types of customer behavior are categorized as yellow, orange or red. Yellow refers to a creepy vibe or unsavory look. Orange means comments with sexual undertones, such as certain compliments on a worker’s appearance. Red signals overtly sexual comments or touching, or repeated incidents in the orange category after being told the comments were unwelcome.
When a staff member has a harassment problem, they report the color — “I have an orange at table five” — and the manager is required to take a specific action. If red is reported, the customer is ejected from the restaurant. Orange means the manager takes over the table. With a yellow, the manager must take over the table if the staff member chooses. In all cases, the manager’s response is automatic, no questions asked. (At the time of our meeting, all our shift managers were men, though their supervisors were women; something else we’ve achieved since then is diversifying each layer of management.)
In the years since implementation, customer harassment has ceased to be a problem. Reds are nearly nonexistent, as most sketchy customers seem to be derailed at yellow or orange. We found that most customers test the waters before escalating and that women have a canny sixth sense for unwanted attention. When reds do occur, our employees are empowered to act decisively.
The color system is elegant because it prevents women from having to relive damaging stories and relieves managers of having to make difficult judgment calls about situations that might not seem threatening based on their own experiences. The system acknowledges the differences in the ways men and women experience the world, while creating a safe workplace.
Brilliant.
And to support her brilliance, I’ll be buying her cookbook, Mac and Cheese.
[image description: a tweet from RoAnna Sylver (@RoAnna Syvler) reading “This June, please rememeber that there are more LGBT books than the ones you see everywhere put out by the Big 5, ad indies are amazing/worthy.” The next reblog is a tweet from Heather Rose Jones (@heatherrosejones) reading: “Making a list of queer SFF for Pride Month? Remember to look outside the mainstream presses. Don’t shut queer publishers out of queer lit.”]
Here’s a bunch of Goodreads lists that might help!
wupacing 