But it's not just the protagonists. Where are the protagonists who have relationships with their own mothers? Grandmothers? Friends who are mothers? Also, we have a lack of middle aged protagonists in fantasy and sci-fi in general, but what about protagonists with grown up children who can get along perfectly well without them?
I hang out in YA land mostly, where there isn't as much of that (because if you want to write for children and teens, you probably like them at least a little, even if plenty of teens are willing to believe anyone before puberty is an evil hellspawn) but I have noticed a strange tendency to have a character have a kid, and then his/her life is over as far as the story's concerned, and if there's a sequel, it's about said kid. Teen parentage does not happen in YA Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
Um, ick, Author Tracts.
I've been to one convention, twice, Anime Exbo, which used to be a big treat, because I would spend all week for two weeks beforehand getting a yearly battery of tests and it involved lots of shots (fifty or more a day) and lots of feeling really sick, and since we had to be in southern CA anyway for that, my parents let me drag them to that. So I have no real Con experience, but from what I've read and the complaints I've heard, the more elitist feeling the convention is, the less willing it is to accommodate disability and I haven't been paying as good attention, but probably the more likely it is to have other skeevy privileged stuff show up. And the more writing and literature oriented the con is, the more elitist it tends to be, which as a huge written fantasy freak, breaks my heart.
In Fantasy, especially with as common as inherited feudal structures still are, you would think children would be much more important given the sort of life or death political roles they played, especially for women. Jennifer Roberson, who calls the sort of genre she writes "dynastic fantasy" (and has her own problems, but don't they all) has the intermarriage and production of children play a huge role in her novels, and for an obsessive amateur historian like me, it was a breath of fresh air to read her (decades old) novels. it just made more sense.
Or we could do the cheep storytelling trick we've been using for male characters for years and "refrigerate" said child, and possibly a husband too (kill them off) to send the heroine on her adventure. Or kidnap the child, or endanger it some other way, or make the child the reason for the adventure. For example: young, mildy royal girl in a feudal world has a child, and there is general unrest in the country. Seeing she now has a potential heir, rebellious nobles want to set her up on the throne! or we could go the Terminator route and have a mother protect her prophesied child, or... Of course that presupposes feudalism as the only appropriate fantasy governmental structure, and no, but there are ways!
I agree. The current similarity a lot of modern worlds have to each other, reflecting back the status quo is not the sort of spec fic I signed up to read.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-09-06 01:08 am (UTC)I hang out in YA land mostly, where there isn't as much of that (because if you want to write for children and teens, you probably like them at least a little, even if plenty of teens are willing to believe anyone before puberty is an evil hellspawn) but I have noticed a strange tendency to have a character have a kid, and then his/her life is over as far as the story's concerned, and if there's a sequel, it's about said kid. Teen parentage does not happen in YA Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
Um, ick, Author Tracts.
I've been to one convention, twice, Anime Exbo, which used to be a big treat, because I would spend all week for two weeks beforehand getting a yearly battery of tests and it involved lots of shots (fifty or more a day) and lots of feeling really sick, and since we had to be in southern CA anyway for that, my parents let me drag them to that. So I have no real Con experience, but from what I've read and the complaints I've heard, the more elitist feeling the convention is, the less willing it is to accommodate disability and I haven't been paying as good attention, but probably the more likely it is to have other skeevy privileged stuff show up. And the more writing and literature oriented the con is, the more elitist it tends to be, which as a huge written fantasy freak, breaks my heart.
In Fantasy, especially with as common as inherited feudal structures still are, you would think children would be much more important given the sort of life or death political roles they played, especially for women. Jennifer Roberson, who calls the sort of genre she writes "dynastic fantasy" (and has her own problems, but don't they all) has the intermarriage and production of children play a huge role in her novels, and for an obsessive amateur historian like me, it was a breath of fresh air to read her (decades old) novels. it just made more sense.
Or we could do the cheep storytelling trick we've been using for male characters for years and "refrigerate" said child, and possibly a husband too (kill them off) to send the heroine on her adventure. Or kidnap the child, or endanger it some other way, or make the child the reason for the adventure. For example: young, mildy royal girl in a feudal world has a child, and there is general unrest in the country. Seeing she now has a potential heir, rebellious nobles want to set her up on the throne! or we could go the Terminator route and have a mother protect her prophesied child, or... Of course that presupposes feudalism as the only appropriate fantasy governmental structure, and no, but there are ways!
I agree. The current similarity a lot of modern worlds have to each other, reflecting back the status quo is not the sort of spec fic I signed up to read.