wtf Naomi Novik

[snarp]

I read Uprooted and gosh, she must've given herself carpal tunnel straightening out such an obviously gay book.

It reads exactly as if she hurriedly chopped out all the scenes where the girls should have been making out and didn't bother to replace them with anything to make their relationship make sense again. And then stuck on the heterosexual happy ending and sent the book off before the glue had dried.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

So I haven’t read the book and only got 2 books into the Temeraire series. Maybe there’s some un-heteronormativity I haven’t seen (nb smarmy homoerotic subtext with a dragon doesn’t count)

But, without revealing her fannish pseud, what annoys me is that she is a slash writer. She has spent the last ten years or whatever gaining popularity and writing practice creating same sex romances in an environment where they’re accepted, and then the moment she decided to write for a wider audience it’s 100% heterosexuality everywhere. I don’t usually subscribe to the “straight slashers are appropriating queerness” argument, there’s lots of perfectly good reasons a straight woman might enjoy writing slash, and I’ve even seen cases where they went on to write het professionally and it made sense to me. But in this case I do feel a bit annoyed. (nb I am only 80% sure she’s straight)

After reading some of her fic and books I was surprised to see her write a female main character at all. But I have complicated feelings about published female authors who write about men and this is long enough.

(haha! I typed this up on tumblr then thought "do I really want to make a public post picking a fight with a BNF?". And then I realised I could leave it as a comment on your dreamwidth post and be much safer. HOORAY FOR DREAMWIDTH)

[starlady]

I got through Temeraire book 5 and stopped because all the interesting characters were women, but the books weren't about them. (No non-heteronormativity in sight at that point.) So I was glad to see that this book had a female protagonist.

It feels like in both her fanfic and professional careers she has inevitably made safe/and or conservative choices in terms of representation.

[vass]

Just as a datapoint, there is one confirmed gay character in the Temeraire books, and another character who is definitely not straight.

[alias_sqbr]

I got through Temeraire book 5 and stopped because all the interesting characters were women, but the books weren't about them That was definitely one of the things I found frustrating.

It feels like in both her fanfic and professional careers she has inevitably made safe/and or conservative choices in terms of representation. Yeah.