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TODAY I AM A DARKOVER BOOK
COMYN LORD: I am so angry and celibate! It has something to do with my psychic powers.
HIS DAD: Cry moar. You are going to be a warrior and awesome and give me millions of awesome grandchildren because I have inadequacy issues.
COMYN LORD: I hate you, father! I fantasize about killing you with such eerie vividness that I must flee the room to rest my burning forehead against the cool stones of the corridor wall, terrified by how near I have come to patricide this day.
HIS DAD: (That is normal on Darkover.)
COMYN LADY: HI I’M HERE FOR THE ARRANGED MARRIAGE
COMYN LORD: You are so impossibly beautiful and innocent that I cannot bear even to look at you with my impure, lustful eyes.
COMYN LADY: (That is normal on Darkover.)
COMYN LORD: Women in your family tend to die in childbirth, and children in my family tend to go mad when their psychic powers develop at adolescence, and you’re a the Keeper of a Tower and psychologically conditioned to kill men who lust after you.
COMYN LADY: I am also your first cousin.
COMYN LORD: Alas, though we are madly in love already, we cannot possibly consummate our marriage.
COMYN LADY: Even though we’re telepaths, and that will eventually drive us mad?
COMYN LORD: Yup. It’s pretty crazy how often this exact situation arises on Darkover, isn’t it?
COMYN LADY: Yeah, I don’t even know.
SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD WHO LOOKS JUST LIKE THE HERO EXCEPT MEANER: I just did something! Something wicked and unnatural!
COMYN LORD AND LADY: *accidentally have sex due to wicked-and-unnatural-related stress*
COMYN LADY: I’m pregnant with your baby! It may be a monster. It may also be the promise of a better future, depends on the book.
SLIGHTLY YOUNGER COMYN LORD/LADY WHO HAS SUCH POTENTIAL: I just did something! Something selfish and ignorant!
HIS DAD AGAIN: It’s my fault because I raised him/her wrong, but I don’t realize it.
COMYN LORD: I dare not raise my voice to my father - his heart is weak, and it would kill him.
COMYN LADY: *miscarries due to selfish-and-ignorant-related stress*
COMYN LORD: DADDY I AM REPLACING YOU WITH AN AUNT FROM A GEORGETTE HEYER NOVEL
HIS DAD AGAIN: *is killed by his weak heart*
SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD: Say, have I mentioned that I am a sexual deviant in some manner? Maybe I’m a pedophile, or I keep nonhuman sex slaves. I could be into wife-swapping? Definitely bondage. Probbbably not a furry.
COMYN LADY: There was a furry one time, but I don’t think that ever actually got explained.
SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD: Oh, yeah. That was weird.
COMYN LORD: He was like, a cat, right? Was Bradley already hanging around with Mercedes Lackey then?
COMYN LADY: No, too early. Lackey must have gotten the idea from her.
SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD: It is not inconceivable that both arrived at the evil catman idea independently. Anyway, my point was that you can tell I’m evil because of the sex stuff. Let’s have a final battle now.
COMYN LORD AND LADY JOIN FORCES AND FORM A BAND THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN, AND THEY CALL THEMSELVES SOMETHING TOTALLY DUMBSHIT, LIKE “THE FORBIDDEN TOWER.”
SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD: I see the error of my sexy ways. It is notable that I have already produced many more children than the two of you ever will, so ensuring a robust population of villains and men with inadequacy issues with which to populate later books. *dies*
SLIGHTLY YOUNGER COMYN LORD/LADY: *is maybe also dead*
COMYN LORD: …so, my psychic powers tell me we will have a baby someday, so we had better get on that. Even though tragedy lays in our child’s future!
COMYN LADY: We will live happily ever after until we are slaughtered in the events of a later book.
SPACESHIPS: (There were also spaceships in this book.)
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Possibly Also Relevant To Your Interests: Anne Bishop.
(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)
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Also, while the handling of GLBTQ and people and issues can be pretty rough, it was the first set of books that I encountered that acknowledged the existence of said people and issues and (attempted to) explore some of it in a meaningful way. Not saying they were always successful, but from a lit-crit standpoint, interesting in what it was doing at the time. ETA: Same with feminism, and acknowledging that the society was patriarchal and what that often meant for a woman who couldn't fit in it and what her options might be.
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I may read and report! But there are so many others that I WANT to read!
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Also, what