Hi! I'm Valentine Wheeler, author of short stories and (soon) novels and novellas. I'm also a First Reader for Strange Horizons and on the editorial staff of Wizards in Space! Recent Work: SURFACE TENSION, a F/F fantasy novella, and CHECKED BAGGAGE, a M/M romance novelette. www.valentinewheeler.com
If you like postal workers, M/M romance, bi guys realizing their queerness late in life, and small towns where everyone’s up in everyone else’s business, check out GIVE WAY, my new novella!
Preorder on Amazon (or if you don’t want to give Bezos your money, at the publisher’s site: Ninestar Press)
Add on Goodreads!
Ao3 tags: M/M, queer awakening, postal worker AU, the only boys in blue we support, awkward realizations, friendly exes, small town romance, small town GOSSIP, Very Massachusetts Content, holidays without Christmas celebrators
If you follow me on twitter you saw this already, but here’s my favorites I read this year.
They weren’t all 2018 releases, but they’re what hit my kindle/bookshelf and stood out! In reverse order, basically, of when I read them. Check out the list below - it’s a little eclectic.
The Good Neighbor: The Life and Works of Fred Rogers (Maxwell King) - My toddler is ALL ABOUT Mr. Rogers. Turns out he was just as wonderful in life as he was on TV. If you’ve got a small person in your life who loves him (or you were one), I recommend this deep dive into his life and legacy.
Blackfish City (Sam J. Miller) - This sat on my kindle for months before I opened it, but once I passed the first few chapters and got into the world, I blew through 90% in a day. Beautifully woven storytelling, deep worldbuilding. Infrastructure, plague, and culture clash: three things that win me instantly. PLUS a nonbinary POV character!!
A Conspiracy of Truths (Alex Rowland) - I hate unreliable narrators, and yet, here I am, in love with this book. I finished the audiobook (which is BEAUTIFULLY narrated!!) and actually yelled out loud when there wasn’t any more. WHAT A WORLD. Economics, legal drama, and grumpy characters: three more things I can’t resist in a novel.
A Duke by Default/A Princess in Theory (Alyssa Cole) - I hadn’t read much romance until this year, and I don’t know why because turns out I love it. Or at least, I love Alyssa Cole’s work. Both of these had great heroines and super fun supporting casts. I loved both of them equally. I want the next one immediately.
Witchmark (C.L. Polk) - Everyone said I’d love this. EVERYONE WAS RIGHT. Magic! Bikes! Social class based on a false meritocracy! MURDER! MAGIC-SCIENCE BLEND! REALLY FREAKY PAYOFF! Read it. You’re missing out if you don’t.
Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik) - Now, I’ve loved Naomi Novik’s work for about fifteen years. I knew I’d like this one. What I didn’t expect was to have to lie down for a few hours to contemplate it after reading it in one go. I love a main character who ISN’T traditionally sympathetic but you love anyway. Beautifully woven folklore and feeling.
Legend (and sequels) (Marie Lu) - I love YA dystopias with all my heart. This was such a great one. I loved the characters, I loved the setting, I loved seeing the broader world than is usually seen in a post-apocalyptic setting (how DO other governments handle the end of the old way??) Just a delightful read.
Fuzzy Nation (John Scalzi) - I tried to minimize my white men on my reading list this year, but Scalzi is always an exception. I LOVE the original work, and this is a beautiful update. But then, legal battles in space will always win me over. Love it just as much as HBP’s, which is a pretty high bar to cross.
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns (Julie C Dao) - This took me a while to get through, because it was so, I don’t know, filled with impending doom? This little book had such a dark, blood-soaked voice, and I love a fairytale retelling that DOESN’T go how you expect. Absolutely worth reading. Lush setting, high body count.
The Poet X (Elizabeth Acevedo) - If I had known this was all in verse, I wouldn’t have picked it up. So I’m really glad I didn’t know that. If that turns you off, listen to the audiobook. A phenomenal performance. What an immersive experience this book was. It’s stuck with me for months after reading.
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (Meg Elison) - I love post-apocalyptic stories. This was a brutal one. Explores how different communities deal in the face of disaster, and not for the weak of stomach. But one of my favorite PA books of the year for sure. Bought the sequel and finished both in one day.
An Extraordinary Union/A Hope Divided (Alyssa Cole) - The other set of her books I devoured this year. The first slavery-era US romance I’ve read that didn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth. The way she builds her characters and their bonds is just SO #goals.
Orientalism (Edward Said) - I’ve been meaning to read this for a while, and I finally made it through this year. A little dated, maybe, but a dense brick of really interesting thinking and history. A classic for a reason!! The audiobook is GREAT.
Americanah (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - I love a character who is lying to herself! And I love a book where the backstory is meted out in drips and dabs. A dive into communities I know very little about, some of which are right around the corner from me. Ifemelu is a completely solid character, one that feels ABSOLUTELY real.
Trail of Lightning (Rebecca Roanhorse) - If you’ve read her short fiction, you know she’s a master. This lived up to it. Post-apocalyptic Navajo monsterhunters? Exactly as awesome as promised. The mythology and worldbuilding are perfection.
The Calculating Stars/The Fated Sky (Mary Robinette Kowal) - THESE BOOKS! I love alternate history, I love space, I love characters who confront prejudice within themselves and without! Every character makes SENSE, even when they’re awful! All the science feels absolutely real! I WANT TO GO TO SPACE
The Book of M (Peng Shepherd) - My goodness, I read a lot of post apocalyptic novels this year? This one has one of my personal fears - memory loss that can’t be stopped. Another great blend of science and maybe-magic and spirituality (?) and how humans cope with weird, horrifying, tragic things.
Alexander Hamilton (Ron Chernow) - I figured before seeing Hamilton I needed to read the book, and I’m really glad I did. Super engaging, with just the right blend of anecdote and data. After reading this I definitely annoyed my mother and my spouse during the whole musical by whispering trivia at them.
War Against All Puerto Ricans (Nelson Denis) - I’m ashamed to say I knew very little about the history of Puerto Rico. After reading this book, that really pisses me off. The US really did PR wrong, and continues to do so. A vital read for anyone interested in US history.
Cinder/Scarlet/Winter/Cress (Marissa Meyer) - Apparently people have been into these for years and I’m just hitting them now. Fun YA, a genre I’ve missed (I like all this hard-hitting, serious YA, but sometimes over the top silly is absolutely necessary!). Spouse and I enjoyed pointing out all the absurd fairy tale tropes.
Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel) - !!! I’m ALL ABOUT books that weave together multiple stories that you KNOW how to intersect somehow but you don’t know HOW IT WILL HAPPEN! Post apocalyptic, weaving stories over fifteen years, all connecting to the life of one guy as the apocalypse hits. GREAT.
All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes (Maya Angelou) - Yes, I’m well past missing the boat here. But I’m catching up. My goodness, she’s a beautiful writer. And the period covered in the book is spellbinding and brutal and painful and gorgeous.
Cooking is Terrible (Misha Fletcher) - Okay, do you have like twelve minutes and four dollars to cook dinner every night? THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU. Easy recipes in non-threatening form, with going off-script absolutely encouraged. I read this start to finish and have been referring back FREQUENTLY as I cook.
Front Desk (Kelly Yang) - THE MIDDLE GRADE BOOK I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED. Oh, this was wonderful. I want to give this to every ten year old I know (which is actually none?). Mysteries! Racism! Badass middle schoolers! Intra-community problems! Three-dimensional characters! YES!
Edge of Nowhere (Felicia Davin) - SPACE ROMANCE! Teleportation! Cafe-owning lesbians! Sweet big stoic guy/small angry disaster guy romance (my FAVORITE KIND)! SPACE SPORTS! Space HEIST!!!! Alternate dimensions! YES.
Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng) - This one hurt. What real, beautiful, flawed, horrible characters. All their choices made sense in context, all their pain felt real, and I didn’t want to leave them when the book ended. Content warnings for child death. The 1970s have never felt so close.
Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng) - I usually hate books that start at the end, but this one earned it. Disaster rich people are kind of my jam, especially when they have consequences. And again the characters were the stars. I felt like I knew everyone, and I loved them even when they were awful.
Into the Drowning Deep (Mira Grant) - I’m never going in the ocean again. Mermaids have been ruined forever. Terrifying. Great characters, some of whom die horribly. Scary scary unending horrorshow. But oh, what a way to go. Gory fun filled with great representation.
Uprooted (Naomi Novik) - I was so delighted by Spinning Silver I almost forgot that I loved this one NEARLY as much! Scary forest, plenty of fantasy/fairytale tropes turned on their heads. Disaster love interest. Competent, frustrated main character. A+.
The Beauty that Remains - There were a lot of dead friends books this year, and this was my favorite in the not-police-related category of those. Strangers whose lives weave together around the deaths of three people close to them all, and the band that brought them all closer. Gorgeous.
An Indigenous People’s History of the US (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) - Another one that’s absolutely vital in filling gaps in the history I’ve learned of this country. Engaging writing and strong voice. Didn’t give me any warm patriotic fuzzies, that is for sure.
Company Town (Madeline Ashby) - Floating future town! Unions! Murder! Loved it.
The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead) - I know the boat on this was a couple years ago, but what a chilling, brutal, beautiful book. The slight speculative element was just the perfect touch to give it a flavor of myth, if that makes sense. Steel yourself before reading.
River of Teeth (Sarah Gailey) - HIPPOS! IN THE MISSISSIPPI! This was a DELIGHT from start to finish. Leverage on HIPPOS in the Wild West?! YES PLEASE.
The Wanderers (Meg Howrey) - Astronauts on a simulated mission to Mars basically all break down, as does everyone around them. I adored this book. I loved the thousand POVs because each one was its own distinct voice. I loved the different ways everybody fell apart!
Infomocracy (Malka Older) - WORLDBUILDING!!!!!! Future elections, future political system, future tech, all brilliantly built. I need to read the sequels, but I haven’t managed to work up the brainpower I know they deserve!!! READ THIS if you like scifi political minutiae (I DO)
The Poppy War (RF Kuang) - The first half is Tamora Pierce, the second half is George RR Martin, but better. This was nothing like what I expected. Absolutely staggeringly, brutally beautiful. What a bold novel. Will buy anything else she ever writes sight unseen.
Warcross (Marie Lu) - This is what I wanted Ready Player One to be. Virtual reality gaming with real life consequences. References and fantastic characters. The sequel is just as good.
Zeroboxer (Fonda Lee) - BOXING IN SPACE! Secret science!! MYSTERIES!! All things I love.
Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) - GREAT. Zombies during the Civil War. A heroine who takes no shit and instead takes zombie heads off. COMBAT SCHOOLS. SUPER GREAT.
An Ember in the Ashes (Sabaa Tahir) - I didn’t expect to love this the way I did, but I devoured it, and the two sequels, each in about a day. This felt like all the best parts of old-school fantasy novels, the thick kind you shoved in your backpack in seventh grade, but BETTER. And I love a good Evil Roman!
Space Opera (Catherynne Valente) - Queen meets Hitchhiker’s Guide! This was a JOURNEY from start to finish, a glorious, absurd, delightful meditation on fame and Eurovision and what it means to be worthwhile and human and a person. YES.
The Broken Earth (NK Jemisin) - More like the BROKEN ME after reading these. Periapocalyptic fiction, absolutely 100% deserving every award and more. Content warning for very small child death brutally described, and more horrors. NK Jemisin goes HARD.
American Islamophobia (Khaled A Beydoun) - Could not put this down. I learned an astonishing amount, especially about the historical place of Islam, Muslims, and Islamophobia in the US. A hard read, but worth the work.
All the Birds in the Sky (Charlie Jane Anders) - Okay, I have to admit it, I have no idea what was going on in this book. But that didn’t stop me from loving it!! Witches and technology and animals and weird apocalyptic nonsense! DELIGHTFUL
Anger is a Gift (Mark Oshiro) - Another YA book that pulled no punches. What a phenomenal look into the way kids and communities of color move through the world, and how the world moves against them.
History is All You Left Me (Adam Silvera) - SO MANY DEAD FRIEND BOOKS THIS YEAR. A great use of the start at the middle, work both directions format, it covers both the time before the death of the MC’s ex and the fallout. I wept through most of it.
White Tears (Hari Kunzru) - Horror, and the villain is essentially appropriation. Very satisfying! The author’s love of music comes through. A nerdy, scary, millennial read.
Love, Hate and Other Filters (Samira Ahmed) - Loved this. Melded teen interpersonal drama, family expectations vs. dreams, and confronting the world and the way they see you all at once, woven together in a beautiful way.
A People’s History of the US (Howard Zinn) - Obviously this is great. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by his son. Sobbed through the child labor chapters. Cheered at the union chapters. Loved it.
Thornfruit/Nightvine/Shadebloom (Felicia Davin) - I LOVE WORLDBUILDING. This is a fantasy on a world that doesn’t turn, so night and day are DIRECTIONS, not times. SO COOL. And I adore the main character. Small Angry/Large Shy is the BEST ROMANCE TROPE. The magic and language is beautifully developed.
Tempests and Slaughter (Tamora Pierce) - Look. I’ll read a gonorrhea brochure if Tamora Pierce writes it. So you knew this would be on the list. But it earned its spot! I love Numair in the Daine series, and he’s a tiny ball of feelings in this. I need more.
Unfamiliar Fishes (Sara Vowell) - I’ve always been interested in Hawaiian history, and though this was a little light and memoir-y for my taste, it contained a shocking amount of information that went down easy in her light, friendly style. Absolutely worth the couple hours it’ll take you.
The Only Harmless Great Thing (Brooke Bolander) - Elephants! Memory! What it means to have value! What we owe other beings! Radium! Sharp and dark and deeper than it has any right to be.
Sarai ran away from home to find a new life on the high seas. But when a storm destroys her ship and her life aboard it, she's stuck on land with only a days-long hole in her memory and the tattered clothes on her back. What could have happened beneath the sea? And can the strange new world she finds when she investigates help her save the world she left behind?
My new novella comes out this week! Check it out if you like mermaid abductions, confused ladies, conspiracy theories, and F/F fantasy!
Guess what, friends?? IT’S WIZARDS IN SPACE SUBMISSION TIME AGAIN!
We’re a little printed lit mag with big dreams. We’re looking for fiction and creative nonfiction under 5000 words, poetry (up to four poems, up to a page each), and visual stories/comics (up to four one-page pieces or one comic or visual story up to four pages long!
Here’s the call for submissions:
Wizards in Space believes that all writers and artists deserve compensation for their work. In line with this belief, all creators with pieces accepted will be paid $30 and retain rights to their work.
WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR:
For Issue 04, we seek impactful fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art that orbit the charged and current conversations of our world and tell authentic stories just waiting to lift off.
We’re particularly interested in themes of space and place, things that change and things that don’t, the spots we share and the ones we keep to ourselves. Where do you go when you need peace? Where do you go when you need to be loud? What moments and what places do you find yourself returning to over and over again? What brings you back to yourself and what lets you rise above the things that try to bring you down? We invite you to experiment and invent, follow and break the rules as you see fit. Share with us your political and your personal, your faith, identity, love and loss, truths and dreams. Even if you are not sure your work fits, we want to hear from you.
My holiday romance CHECKED BAGGAGE is up on Goodreads and the publisher’s website for preorder! I’m very pleased with this little story, which clocks in at 11k words and is part of Ninestar Press’s Holiday Shorts series.
CHECK IT OUT NOV 12!
When Faris has to take a trip back to his family’s home in Lebanon to handle his grandmother’s estate, he finds himself caught between the world he left as a child and the world he’s built himself in the United States. After an exhausting stay with his boisterous extended family, all he wants is a quiet trip home before Thanksgiving with his parents in Massachusetts. But the weather has different plans for him.
Charlie’s father left when he was a toddler, and he’s never gotten the chance to connect with his paternal roots. A trip to the village his family left in the 1930s gave him the facts, but left him yearning for a history he still didn’t feel.
When both men are stuck in Beirut for the night unexpectedly, can they find the connection they’re missing and make it home by Thanksgiving?
My holiday romance CHECKED BAGGAGE is up on Goodreads and the publisher’s website for preorder! I’m very pleased with this little story, which clocks in at 11k words and is part of Ninestar Press’s Holiday Shorts series.
CHECK IT OUT NOV 12!
When Faris has to take a trip back to his family's home in Lebanon to handle his grandmother's estate, he finds himself caught between the world he left as a child and the world he's built himself in the United States. After an exhausting stay with his boisterous extended family, all he wants is a quiet trip home before Thanksgiving with his parents in Massachusetts. But the weather has different plans for him.
Charlie's father left when he was a toddler, and he's never gotten the chance to connect with his paternal roots. A trip to the village his family left in the 1930s gave him the facts, but left him yearning for a history he still didn't feel.
When both men are stuck in Beirut for the night unexpectedly, can they find the connection they're missing and make it home by Thanksgiving?
Futurefire.net Publishing and the Institute of Classical Studies are putting together a mixed fiction, poetry and nonfiction volume titled Making Monsters to be published in September 2018, edited by Emma Bridges and Djibril al-Ayad. The volume will include retellings or reimaginings of classical monsters from any ancient mythology, in fantasy, horror or science fiction short stories, flash and poetry.
Table of Contents:
• Introduction – Emma Bridges
• Danae – Megan Arkenberg
• The Last Siren Sings – George Lockett
• Field Reports from the Department of Monster Resettlement – L. Chan
• Calling Homer's Sirens (essay) – Hannah Silverblank
• Aeaea on the Seas – Hester J. Rook
• To the Gargoyle Army (poem) – H.A. Eilander
• Water – Danie Ware
• Monsters of the World (essay) – Margrét Helgatdóttir
• A Song of Sorrow – Neil James Hudson
• Helen of War (poem) – Margaret McLeod
• The Vigil of Talos – Hûw Steer
• The Monster in Your Pocket (essay) – Valeria Vitale
• A Heart of Stone – Tom Johnstone
• The Banshee – Alexandra Grunberg
• The Giulia Effect – Barbara Davies
• Caught in Medusa's Gaze (essay) – Liz Gloyn
• The Eyes Beyond the Hearth – Catherine Baker
• Eclipse – Misha Penton
• The Origin of the Different (essay) – Maria Anastasiadou
• Justice Is a Noose – Valentine Wheeler
• Siren Song (poem) – Barbara E. Hunt
• The Tengu's Tongue – Rachel Bender
• Ecological Angst and Encounters with Scary Flesh (essay) – Annegret Märten
• When Soldiers Come – Hunter Liguore
• Afterword – Mathilde Skoie
My alter-ego, Lis Valentine, has some erotica in this collection! Check out Fire and Brine, a bar meetup that gets steamy, in Into the Mystic Volume Three!
You guys, you must stop doing this. You must. We cannot keep yelling at you about it because it makes us so angry, and we are already angry all the time, about real things, like how our lives are turning into a real world Handmaid’s Tale, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha ha ha ha ha ha. We cannot keep spending our energy being mad at mediocre men for writing mediocre books that inexplicably win awards and that people tell us to read, for some fucking godawful who knows reason.
So men. My guys. My dudes. My bros. My writers. I am begging you to help me here. When you have this man in your workshop, you must turn to him. You must take his clammy hands in yours. You must look deep into his eyes, his man eyes, with your man eyes, and you must say to him, “Peter, I am a man, and you are a man, so let us talk to each other like men. Peter, look at the way you have written about the only four women in this book.” And Peter will say, trying to free his hands, “What? These are sexy, dynamic, interesting women.” And you must grip his hands even tighter and you must say to him, “ARE THEY, PETER? Why are they interesting? What are their hobbies? What are their private habits? What are their strange dreams? What choices are they making, Peter? They are not making choices. They are not interesting. What they are is sexy, and you have those things confused, and not in the good way where someone’s interestingness makes them become sexy, like Steve Buscemi or Pauline Viardot. Why must women be sexy to be interesting to you? The women you don’t find sexy are where, Peter? They are invisible? They are all dead?” He is trying to escape! Tighten your grasp. “Peter, look at this. I mean, where to begin. ‘She could have been any age between eighteen and thirty-five?’ There are no other ages, I guess? Do you know what eighteen-year-olds really look like, in life? Do you know what thirty-SEVEN-year-olds look like, god forbid? And not that this is even the point, but why are these supposedly sexy and dynamic and interesting women BOTHERING with your boring garbage ‘on the skinny side of average’ protagonist? Why did you write it like this, Peter?”
And maybe Peter will say at last, “I don’t know.” Maybe he will be silent for a long long long time, and then maybe he will say, “I guess it’s scary and difficult for me to imagine the interiority of women because then i would have to know that my mother had an interiority of her own: private, petty, sexually unstimulating, strange: unrelated to me and undevoted to my needs. That sometimes I was nothing to my mother, just as sometimes she is nothing to me. That I was not at all times her immediate concern.”
“I know, Peter,” you can tell him gently.
“I don’t want to know that my mother was a human being with an internal life, because to know that would be to risk a frightening intimacy with her,” Peter will say, maybe. “Because to know that would be to know that she was only a small, complicated person, no bigger or smaller than I am, and I am so small. To know how alone she was. How alone I am. How alone we all are. That my mother survived with no resources more mysterious than my own. And yet she gave me life. My God: she gave me life. How can I pay her back for that? And how can I forgive her for it? How can I ever repay her for the good and the evil of it, my life, every day of my life?” He will be sobbing probably. “I am frightened of her. I am frightened of loneliness. I am frightened of dying. O God. My God. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” Drool will run from his mouth as he cries. The way babies cry. He will be ashamed. You must hold him. You must say, “Shh, Peter. Shh.” Wrap your man arms around him. Hum into his thin hair as your own mother hummed once into your own sweet-smelling baby scalp. Kiss him gently on his mouth. There. You did it, men. You fixed sexism. Thank you. You’re the real hero here, as always, you men, and your special man powers, for making art.
I have a new story in an awesome anthology from @ninestarpress!
Check it out for:
#Retirees in love
#Bad baking
#Queer daughters meddling
#Old ladies meddling
#Men dealing with feelings
#A super grumpy main character who secretly tries really hard!
The anthology has some other fantastic stories as well, including one that has one of my favorite fanfiction tropes of all time. There’s fantasy botany, steamy photography, theatre gone wrong, ghosts, refugee tutoring, unexpected twists, and more!
What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”
Oral history from various First Nations tribes in the Pacific Northwest contained stories about a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting the coast, but no one listened to them until scientists discovered physical evidence of quakes from the Cascadia fault line.
Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.
Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/
Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄
Adding to this, the Inuit communities in Nunavut KNEW where both the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were literally the entire time but Europeans/white people didn’t even bother consulting them about either ship until like…last year.
“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.
In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.
“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”
“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”
Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.
“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”
Indigenous Australians have had stories about giant kangaroos and wombats for thousands of years, and European settlers just kinda assumed they were myths. Cut to more recently when evidence of megafauna was discovered, giant versions of Australian animals that died out 41 000 years ago.
Similarly, scientists have been stumped about how native Palm trees got to a valley in the middle of Australia, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that someone did DNA testing and concluded that seeds had been carried there from the north around 30 000 years ago… aaand someone pointed out that Indigenous people have had stories about gods from the north carrying the seeds to a valley in the central desert.
oh man let me tell you about Indigenous Australian myths - the framework they use (with multi-generational checking that’s unique on the planet, meaning there’s no drifting or mutation of the story, seriously they are hardcore about maintaining integrity) means that we literally have multiple first-hand accounts of life and the ecosystem before the end of the last ice age
it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.
Now consider this: most people consider the start of recorded history to be with the Sumerians and the Early Dynastic period of the Egyptians. So around 3500 BCE, or five and a half thousand years ago
These highly accurate Aboriginal oral histories originate from twenty thousand years ago at least
These bizarre images, created by users via Russian website Ostagram, are the product of an art technique known as Inceptionism, where images are combined using neural networks to generate a single mind-bending picture.
Not too long ago, I talked on my blog about how epithets (”the taller man,” “the younger man”) are not only bad, but completely unnecessary.
I got a couple of responses that were, shall we say, a bit rich in sodium chloride. I was accused of not understanding that some people have to write scenes with two characters of the same gender. LOL well I’ve only written two hundred M/M fics, so yeah, I guess I wouldn’t know anything about those struggles XD
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Epithets are a non-solution to a non-problem. They are speed bumps in prose, forcing a reader to discern which character is being referred to – just for a fraction of a second, but long enough to be disruptive to the experience.
Also, although I love that fan fiction is not bound to the standards of commercial fiction, I do think it’s telling that no professional author uses epithets, and any publisher or editor who receives a manuscript with epithets in them will tell the writer to remove the epithets and try again.
Nevertheless, some people believe that epithets are a preferable alternative to using a character’s name or their pronoun “too much,” on the grounds that this can also be distracting. So I’ve decided to make this post, wherein I, with the help of two characters of the same gender, will show you some sentences that have epithets, and then demonstrate how and why the epithet is unnecessary.
“Bob shoved his hand down the back of Mike’s trousers, cupping the other man’s ass.”
“The other man” is not needed. Just use “his” instead. In the first half of the sentence, we made it clear who was shoving their hand down whose trousers, so in the second half of the sentence, the reader doesn’t need a “hint” about who’ll be doing the groping.
“Bob placed his hands on Mike’s thighs, which thrilled the taller man.”
Okay, I just had to stop reading, go to IMDb, and find out who is taller, the actor who plays Bob, or the actor who plays Mike. Turns out Mike is one inch taller. This could all have been avoided if the sentence had instead read, “It thrilled Mike to feel Bob’s hands on his thighs.”
“Mike heard a gasp from the brunette, the only sound he could muster.”
Super simple: “Bob gasped, the only sound he could muster.” In the original sentence, filtering the action through one of the character’s senses added nothing to the prose. If you wish to use a filter like this, try something a little more evocative instead, like “Bob gasped, the only sound he could muster, and it was music to Mike’s ears.”
“As Bob entered the taller man, the brunette cried out at being penetrated. The florist was worried that he had hurt the barista, but Mike assured the older man that everything was alright and he could keep moving.”
Is this an orgy? How many people are here right now? And why does it matter at this particular moment that one of them is a florist?
Perhaps the above example is a bit exaggerated. But watch as I re-tell this exact action, removing all epithets, without having to use names to an annoying degree: “The penetration was so intense, Mike couldn’t help but cry out. Bob froze, fearing he had proceeded too quickly. With a deep breath, Mike assured him that everything was alright, and to keep moving.”
Hopefully, Mike and Bob have helped me convince you that, if you feel that you have a problem with using the characters’ names and pronouns too many times, epithets are not the solution. Instead, try changing up your sentence structure. Sometimes things can be simplified by breaking a more complex thought into two sentences. Alternately, sometimes a compound sentence will allow you to retain a continuity of action that eliminates the need for naming the characters over and over.
But whatever the case, I always recommend erring on the side of using more pronouns. Once you’ve completed your first draft, give it a couple days (that is, forget the fic a little bit), then go back and re-read. If you have trouble discerning who is doing what to whom, then it might be a good idea to put the character’s name in instead of their pronoun. Names, like the word “said,” are pretty much invisible to the reader. Yes, you can use them too much, but it takes a quite a lot to notice the repetition.
And if you believe that hating on epithets is just “the new trendy thing that’s in vogue right now,” I would like to refer you to this amazing post from 2004 about how epithets are bad. Here’s another, undated but from the LiveJournal era. Here’s an LJ post from 2007 about poor epithet choices that writers make. Here’s a Tumblr post from 2012 on the subject. Also, this essay from 2015 from a professional writer.
Happy writing, and feel free to message me if a particular sentence or paragraph is giving you trouble; I’d be glad to take a look at it. :)
My main piece Berlynn lays down the law about epithets. Listen to her. Please, for the love of all that is good and horny in the world, do not send me a manuscript with epithets. Do not. Please. I’m literally begging you.
If you have to actually make up new words to describe anime hair to tell us who’s being screwed, you’re doing it wrong. “Silverette” and “ravenette” are not things. Don’t make me wonder which fandom I’m in. Don’t reduce people to the country they’re from when they’re fucking.
Epithets are useful when the POV character knows NOTHING ELSE about the character in question. They’re useful when we need reminding of something. They are not “convenient ways to avoid repetition.” I might refer to “the doctor” when someone is actually practicing medicine, but not when they’re fucking unless I need to remind someone about a really squicky power imbalance, and probably not even then.
I have an OC in a fanfic who doesn’t come up very often, I might remind the reader who they are by saying, “the balding sports agent sighed and brought out his notebook” *early* in the conversation, but if it’s a canon character, unless his hair is actively falling out on the spot in a dramatic way I do NOT need to say “The balding skating coach.”
In my head, epithets, like excessive saidisms, translate to “bad overacting”.
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