Part the fifth of an untitled half-satire half-serious short story about LDS teens on Trek

The next morning Lissa woke up scratching her arms. She pushed her sleeping bag aside and peered at her skin.

“Oh, nuts.” It looked like poison ivy. She tried to remember when she would’ve been dumb enough to not notice poison ivy—and the events of the previous night came rushing back. She shook her head, trying not to cry again, and pulled her legs out of the sleeping bag.

“Ma Shannon?”

Ma Shannon came up, tying on her bonnet. “Lissa, look at your arms! Did you get into poison ivy last night? Well, go to the infirmary before breakfast.”

She went over, scraping her hair back into a ponytail. Thankfully the infirmary was busy with an assortment of war wounds garnered during the night, ranging from a black eye on a boy from Cocoa Beach to a row of stitches being sewn into Garrett Singer’s lip. Lissa looked away. Clearly Justin had won the bet over whether someone would run into the barbed wire fence.

“Lissa, what can I do for you?” Sister Walters, who worked at the hospital in Cape Canaveral and had volunteered her services for repairing broken-down Trekkers, came up.

Lissa held out her arms. “I think I ran into some poison ivy last night.”

Sister Walters tssked. “Looks like. Come over here, I’ll get you some aloe and calamine.”

Lissa sat on a bench and waited as Sister Walters rummaged in her box of first aid supplies. Alex thunked down next to her, holding out an arm with an impressive gash on it.

“Yeah dude, definitely ran into that barbed wire fence last night. Getting me a fresh Band-Aid.” He grinned, floppy ginger hair falling over his eyes. Lissa shook her head.

“How dumb are you? I knew that was gonna happen.”

“Yeah, well, at least my face is fine. Unlike G-dude over there.” Alex jerked his head at Garrett, who was managing to pout even through his stitches. Then he turned his attention back to Lissa. “So how’s it going with you and, uhh, Justin?”

Lissa’s heart stopped for a beat. Did he know? Had Justin told someone—told everyone? What if her bishop heard…or her mother? But Alex’s face was questioning, not knowing.

She brushed the question away. “You don’t want to know.”

“Oh my gosh, something happened?” His eyebrows were waggling.

“No!” Lissa burst out, annoyed. “Nothing happened, nothing’s going to happen. He doesn’t like me, Alex, just get over it.” She didn’t know why she was lying, exactly. Becky had told her stories of guys she’d kissed at youth conference and EFY or on the stage at basketball games, hidden behind the curtains. She’d heard similar stories from and about other kids too. No one really got in trouble for it as long as nothing serious happened.

But she couldn’t bear to think of herself that way. She’d prayed again and again last night, begging for repentance. It wasn’t ok for her to sin. She didn’t know why, but it wasn’t. She remembered all the things she’d said the night before, and all the things Justin had said. She wondered, miserable, if her friends ever felt like this.

Alex looked uncomfortable. “Ok. Sorry. Geez.”

Lissa ignored him while Sister Walters spread calamine lotion on her arms and gave her a small tube of aloe. “Now don’t scratch! I know you’ll want to, but when you do, just spread some aloe on.”

Lissa nodded and went off toward the bonfire circle, leaving Alex behind to get his bandage. The Leaders That Be instructed the assembled Families to attend Relief Society or Priesthood, as today was apparently “the Sabbath.” Lissa tried to ignore the fact that it was actually Thursday and went off toward the Relief Society clearing with her sisters. Ma Schwartz and Ma Green gave the lesson together, talking about what everyone could do to preserve the spirit of the Trek in their everyday lives when they went home. The lesson made her feel uncomfortable; worse yet was her assurance that had it been given the day before, she would have felt wonderful.

Part the fourth of an untitled half-satire half-serious short story about LDS teens on Trek

It was her first kiss. Even in that moment she was aware of it, her vague shame that it had taken her almost eighteen years to be kissed. But the shame melted away, replaced by heat and want and was that his tongue? They weren’t supposed to be doing that, she was sure, well, they weren’t supposed to be doing any of this but nothing was going to stop her, not after that conversation, the kind of conversation she’d wanted to have for so long, not threat of damnation or haunting passages from For the Strength of Youth floating through her head in President Packer’s voice, not even—yep, they were falling out of the tree.

Thud. “Aagh,” Justin grunted. He rolled over on the leaves. “Geez, my elbow.”

Lissa pushed herself off the ground. Her butt hurt like no other. She’d landed almost squarely on her tailbone. Thankfully they’d only been about eight feet in the air. She crawled over to Justin. “You ok?”

He smiled up at her, rubbing his left elbow. “Yeah. We’ll have to compare bruises tomorrow. This one’s gonna be legendary, I think.”

Lissa briefly considered the idea of showing Justin her bruise, which she knew would appear exactly between her buttcheeks, and discarded this bad idea in favor of a slightly less bad one. She leaned down and kissed him again. They sank into the leaves and for once no thought of scorpions or fire ants or poison oak entered Lissa’s head. His mouth was soft and she could smell him, boy-sweat and shampoo from their hair-washings earlier and dusty soil, an intoxicating perfume in the heady night. His wonderful cellist’s fingers were on her back, pulling her close. She sighed and wound her fingers in his hair. She felt warm all over, a slow spread of heat from every point of contact.

Something thunked onto her head and dampness burst out over her hair. Lissa sat up abruptly. “What--?”

The A&W soda can rolled to one side. It had toppled off the tree branch where she’d left it. She rubbed her head, scowling. Next to her Justin sat up as well. He didn’t look at her. After a moment they both stood, Lissa gathering the soda can and the crumpled Starbursts wrapper. She hated people who littered.

Neither said anything as they walked back toward the camp. At the first possible moment Justin split away from her, going to join a group of guys jostling one another at the water fountain. Lissa rubbed her arms and walked back to her Family’s camp. The night had grown oddly chilly and she snuggled down into her sleeping bag, pulling the fabric over her head so that no one could see her cry.

Part the third of an untitled half-satire half-serious short story about LDS teens on Trek

The dance ended. Lissa trudged back toward her Family camp. Her friends had disappeared off to their own families. They were all supposed to have prayer together and go to sleep, but everyone knew that on this, the last night of Trek, they would stay up, play Capture the Flag or Uno or Murder in the Dark, gossip with people they hadn’t seen in a while, and eat illicit goodies. Earlier Lissa’s mom had slipped her a roll of Starbursts and some A&W root beer.

Justin hadn’t asked her to dance. She hadn’t ground up the nerve to ask him. She’d danced with Alex and Trevor, with a guy from Cocoa who was about a foot shorter than her, and she and Becky and Lizzie had danced together until the bishop from Palm Bay had sternly told them to stop. She was angry at herself for her lack of courage. What year was it, after all? She could certainly ask a guy to dance. She was angry at Alex for telling her nonsense about how Justin liked her. And she was angry at Justin for coming to find to her, then ignoring her—yanking her out of that stupid canal like he was worried, then not asking her to dance.

A few yards away was the fire of her Family’s camp. Lissa stopped in only to grab her Starbursts and soda and to tell Pa Shannon she was planning on playing Capture the Flag, though she was planning no such thing. She headed for the low-hanging oak tree she’d found earlier. This time she climbed higher, into a broad branch that stretched out over the fenced pasture. She cracked open the root beer and began unwrapping her Starbursts.

As she munched on chemical deliciousness, a rustle sounded below her. Someone was walking around. She glanced down, squinting in the dark. It looked like Justin—he’d pinned a giant sunflower to his hat earlier in the day, which made him easy to recognize from above. He stopped and looked up. Too late Lissa wondered if he could see up her skirt, then decided that bloomers left quite a lot to the imagination.

He waved. “Hey!”

Lissa swallowed hurriedly and coughed, “Hey.” He set his hands on the bark of the oak and climbed up, perching awkwardly on the branch by her feet. “What are you doing up here?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She drew up her feet to give him more room. “I didn’t feel like playing Capture the Flag. Seems like kind of not exactly the smart thing to do…it’s so dark out here and, hello, there’s a barbed wire fence.”

“Bet you the rest of my M&Ms that someone runs into it.” He laughed. Instinctively Lissa grinned. His laugh was so nice, almost as musical as his cello playing. He was the best musician of any age in their stake. Her horrible traitorous brain wondered for a moment if that was why his hands were so nice, then took it a step further to the memory of last Christmas at stake conference, when he’d played “Carol of the Bells” on his cello, accompanied by violin and piano, and she’d had to remind herself not to stare at his legs and the instrument between them and the picture they presented.

For a moment they were quiet. Justin looked up through the oak leaves at the sky. “It really is dark out here. There are so many more stars than you can see at home.”

“Pretty scary,” Lissa said. “I like Star Trek and all, but I don’t really want to go into space.”

“You like Star Trek?” Justin asked. Then he laughed again. “Of course you do, you like everything cool.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Lissa joked. “My tastes are about the opposite of cool. What lies has Alex been pouring in your ear?”

“It all seems accurate so far.” Justin glanced at her, then away to the stars again. “Alex said you guys and Lizzie went to see Florence and the Machine in Orlando. That’s pretty cool. I love them, but my parents hate concerts.”

 Lissa breathed in and out very slowly. He liked Florence too! The wretched humidity of the night seemed even worse. She swore she could feel his body heat next to her. She swung her legs over the side of the branch.

“You’re not leaving, are you? We haven’t even talked about Florence yet.” He said it like he was trying to joke, but Lissa thought his voice sounded strange. She slid her eyes sideways. His profile stood out against the moonlit field. “They’re really great. My parents never let me go to concerts.”

“Mine don’t really either,” Lissa said. “I actually got in trouble for going to that one, but I paid for the ticket with my own money, so…whatever. It was worth it.”

“Are they awesome live?” he asked. She nodded. “Man. I can’t wait to go to college in a real city where I can go to whatever concerts I want.”

“Me too,” Lissa said. “I’ll see Corinne Bailey Rae and Damien Rice and—I don’t know, everyone I’ve always wanted to see. I…” Her voice trailed away. She was afraid to say what she wanted to say. She swallowed, mouth dry. “It’s weird but I feel like—like I can feel the Spirit at concerts. Like how it’s supposed to feel.”

She had never said anything like that before, not out loud, hardly even to herself at night when she listened to “The Curse” on her headphones and felt like her chest was going to burst. And now Justin would know that she wasn’t the best choice of girl to hang out with. And he definitely wouldn’t like her.

The night was heavy and still, no hint of breeze. A ways off the sounds of the camp were audible. In the pasture kids darted around, yelling and laughing.

Justin touched her hand gingerly. After a moment, after she hadn’t moved her hand away, he said, “I know what you mean, Lissa.”

“But…” she whispered. “Your testimony, during the meeting before we left…”

She felt him shrug. “Sometimes I don’t feel anything. A lot of times. And a lot of times I feel things I’m not supposed to or I feel the right thing at the wrong time. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not what’s supposed to happen. You know?”

Lissa nodded. She was afraid to look at him, afraid it would break the spell. She had never heard anyone say things like this—things that she felt but knew were wrong—not even Becky, who skipped Sunday school and had kissed a boy in every ward in the stake and occasionally smoked cigarettes.

She turned her head and looked at Justin. He looked back and by some mutually-felt and unspoken agreement they leaned toward each other.

Part the second of an untitled half-satire half-serious short story about LDS teens on Trek

That night they gathered at Winter Quarters, which was a pine hammock bordering a stretch of fenced-in pasture. After a lunch of chicken stew cooked in their Dutch ovens, Lissa and her sisters went over to the hairwashing station. Her mother was there among the other women volunteers from various wards, and for some reason she felt shy as they hugged. Her mother was a reminder of the world outside, the world they would have to go back to once the Trek was over. For a little while longer she wanted to remain in the cocoon of unbearable heat, no deodorant, lukewarm Gatorade, and aching muscles. She felt closer to God and to the kids from all over the stake with whom she’d never spent much time or felt much in common with. Even the popular girls, like Sara and Ellen and beautiful, perfect Josie, seemed friendlier as they all ducked their heads under the spigots and washed out three days’ worth of sweat and dust.

And Justin was here, instead of across the stake in Palm Bay. Close enough to touch.

At the thought Lissa jerked her head upright and clocked her skull against the spigot. “Ouch.”

“Honey.” Lissa’s mom steadied her. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lissa shrugged away. “I think I’m going to go learn how to shoot guns.”

She wandered over to the gun range, set up a safe distance away from the center of the camp, but it couldn’t hold her interest. The stick-pulling competition was no competition at all, with her height and arm strength. “Pioneer Idol” was an assault on her ears as Ma Atkins, who considered herself to have quite a voice, caterwauled a terrible rendition of some song off the Sons of Provo soundtrack. Lissa felt restless as she walked through the camp. Inside her warred two sets of feelings: the part of her that wanted more, that didn’t understand, that thought a lot of what Sister Staples said in Sunday school didn’t make sense at all, that liked boys and wanted to kiss boys—and the part that loved the closeness of her ward and the security of the scriptures, magnified by being out here on the ranch with only other people who believed the way she did.

She didn’t know what she felt, or wanted to feel. Her prayers weren’t being answered anymore…or maybe they never had been. Lissa stopped beneath an oak and climbed onto a thick branch that dragged close to the ground. She knew that when the week ended and she returned to the real world, the world waiting for her at Trek’s end, this would vanish. Her Family would disperse. She would no longer be close with the cool people from her ward and the rest of the stake. And Justin would never talk to her again.

“Hey Lissa.”

Her head snapped up. Speak of the devil and he would appear…Justin stood in front of her with one of his brothers, a lanky guy named Alex who was a friend from her ward. They slouched with hands shoved in their pockets, hats pushed back.

“Hey, uh, we’re all supposed to go over to the bonfire pit for the fireside,” Justin said.

Lissa stood up, brushing ants off her skirt. “There’s a dance afterward, right?”

“I believe you mean a hoedown,” Alex drawled. He made a little jigging movement as they walked. Lissa giggled.

“Right, of course, a hoedown. If only I’d brought my prettiest hoopskirt.” Hoopskirts were an old-timey thing, right?

“I like that pioneer style,” Justin joined in. They all laughed together. Lissa’s heart ached. They came to the bonfire pit and Justin swerved off to sit with his Family. Alex ignored Trek protocol and dropped down next to Lissa onto the blanket with the rest of the Shannon tribe. He nudged her in the ribs.

“Justin’s totally into you, dude.” Alex called everyone dude, regardless of sex.

Lissa just managed to keep her jaw from falling open. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Totally,” Alex repeated. “We were over at the blacksmith station making those “prairie diamond” things—“ He made air quotes. “—and I asked him who he was going to give his to and instead of, like, making a joke out of it he didn’t say anything.” Alex grinned and waggled his pale gingery eyebrows. Lissa craned her neck to see what Justin was doing, trying to be casual about it. He was talking to Sara and one of their brothers.

“Dude, you’re off,” Lissa muttered. “He’s always talking to Sara. Alison told me they went out a couple of times.”

“I call ‘em like I see ‘em, yo,” Alex said.

“Well, thanks for the analysis, Dr. Love.” Lissa rolled her eyes. Ma Shannon shushed them as President Lesley stepped up to the front.

She couldn’t concentrate on the fireside. By some miracle she kept herself from glancing over at Justin every ten seconds. She wanted the fireside to be over so that the dance could start—the hoedown, her brain sassed. Hoedown. Hoeing a garden. Garden hose. Pantyhose. Panties. Girls at school with jeans so low you could see their panties. Hos. That was what other girls and some guys called them. Hos.

Ho, like whore. Was that where the word came from? She wondered vaguely if there were any real whores in her hometown. It seemed too small to support a community of prostitutes. She winced at the bad words filling her head just then. Was she a ho? For wanting Justin’s hands to slip down her shoulders that morning in the canal? For not caring that he could see her boobs through her soaked shirt? For hoping he asked her to dance in a few minutes once the closing prayer had been said? For thinking about all the dark corners and hollows this camp had, behind giant old oak trees and across the pasture in the patch of thicker woods?

She was breathing too hard. Alex looked at her out of the corner of his eye, one eyebrow cocked. It was his specialty; he thought it made him look like a Bond villain. Lissa swallowed and shifted her weight on the blanket, folded her arms for the prayer. After Pa Lancaster had finished, everyone surged up and bolted toward the clearing where the dance was supposed to take place.

Lissa could already hear an R.E.M. song booming out of the speakers. She rolled her eyes—it was everyone’s least favorite amateur DJ, Danny from Melbourne who thought that being into music released when he was eight years old made him cool and retro. “Everybody Hurts” wasn’t even a love song, and who started off a dance with a slow song? Lissa followed her family at a leisurely pace. Along the way some friends from her ward, Becky, Lizzie, and Trevor, caught up to her. For the time being she allowed herself to be tumbled along in their wake of laughter, goofy dancing, and shouts of “More Ke$ha!” to DJ Danny.

Part the first of an untitled half-satire half-serious short story about LDS teens on Trek

Lissa pushed damp strands of hair out of her eyes and resettled her straw hat. It was only about nine o’clock in the morning but her legs already felt like crumbling, her calf muscles shaking when she stood still for too long. The June sun beamed down relentlessly as she and her Family shoved and yanked their handcart through the scrub. When Pa Shannon called for a break, she chanced a look backward to see how far behind them the Schwartz Family had gotten. Their handcart was lumbering around a bend in the trail--partly hidden by pine trees, but she had a clear view of Justin as he braced his arms against the side of the handcart, trying to lever it past a mass of tree roots.

His arms…Lissa leaned against her handcart and mopped at her upper lip. His sleeves were rolled up past the elbow, his olive skin turning even darker in the sun. He was so cute, and he had a huge testimony; he’d borne it during the testimony meeting before they set off two days before. She hadn’t borne her testimony in ages; she felt guilty just thinking about it. She thought maybe he’d looked at her during the fireside last night, but then one of the girls in his Family had whispered something to him and they’d laughed together. Lissa frowned. Sara was way prettier than her and petite—her long blonde hair stayed smooth in its French braid even in the brutal humidity—and somehow she was managing to make even their dowdy pioneer duds look fashionable.

Lissa smoothed her apron and went to fill her tin cup with water from the cooler.

They came to a reasonably sized canal a few hours later and halted with the other eight Families. The Leaders That Be had bad news: the bridge a few hundred yards to the north was out and they would all be taking the ferry across the twenty feet or so of water. Slowly the handcarts loaded on, two at a time. Lissa stood with her siblings and watched as the first few went across. Finally it was their turn, along with the Schwartz Family. Lissa tried to ignore the fact that Justin stood mere feet away and grasped the handcart rail while the ferry hove off.

And promptly sank. As her head hit the water, Lissa thought perhaps the catastrophe could be attributed to the girth of Pa Schwartz, a man of redoubtable faith and significant size. But she couldn’t feel that the whole shebang was a bad thing—even the brackish canal water felt wonderfully fresh on her baked skin. Someone was thrashing in the water nearby and nearly kicked her in the head. She swerved sideways and came up beneath a handcart. That was no good. Cursing the long skirt and bloomers dragging her down, she shoved off and toward the bank.

Hands grabbed her, yanking her up from the water. A face was close to hers: olive-skinned and dark-eyed, black curls plastered against his forehead. “Lissa, are you ok?”

He was even cuter up close. How was that possible? People were supposed to be less perfect up close where you could see all their pores and zits and flaws. She herself was acutely aware of her sunburned nose. “Yeah, uh, I’m on the varsity swim team. At school.” Was she blushing or was it just the darned sun?

He laughed sheepishly. “Oh, I didn’t know that. Sorry.”

“No, it’s ok,” Lissa burst out. Duh, of course he didn’t know that, they went to different schools, how could he have known that? He hadn’t let go of her shoulders yet. They knelt together in the muck, knees touching. His fingers felt like brands. She knew without looking that her blue button-up blouse was stuck to her chest—her currently-unprotected-by-a-lined-bra chest—and her face burned hotter. As if on cue his eyes darted downward, then up again. He jerked his hands away from her shoulders.

“Oh, there you are!” Ma Shannon came bustling up, wringing out her bonnet. “Lissa, we were worried! How did you get all the way over here?”

Lissa started to say, “I swam,” but Ma Shannon steamrollered over her. “Justin, did you help her out of the water? Thank you so much.”

Justin nodded awkwardly. “No problem. Uh, I gotta go see if I can find my hat. I think I lost it in the water somewhere.”

He loped off. Lissa forced herself not to stare at his butt. Ma Shannon placed an arm around her shoulders and nattered their way back to the handcart.

You've got to know when it's time to turn the page

This used to be me. I hope it's worth it for this person.

via Postsecret

Freak out with your geek out

It's here once more, folks: Geek Pride Day! If you're a lover of any and/or all things nerdy, today's the day to fly the banner proudly, regardless of stodgy bosses and disapproving parents/significant others. Here are a few things from various corners of my nerd world that I'm currently excited about: 

Book Nerding: Bitterblue. This is the sequel to Graceling and companion to Fire, Kristin Cashore's two previous fantasy novels, and a more gloriously charmed third offering I cannot imagine. Bitterblue is coming into her own as Queen of Monsea, a country ravaged by thirty-five years of mind control due to her father Leck (one of my personal most terrifying villains in literature); all our favorite characters are back (I have been yelling PO!!!!  KATSA!!!! every other page or so); and some awesome new characters have arisen as well (for librarians, it doesn't get much better than Death. Yes, there is a librarian named Death in this book. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR). 

Comics Nerding: Dudes, Batman Incorporated started up again this week! I haven't gotten my issue yet, but I hear it's delectable. Say what you will about Grant Morrison--most of it will be accurate, good and bad--but his Batverse is one of my favorites. Leviathan, the winter offering which tided over Inc. fans, was pretty great, but I can't wait for the ongoing to begin again in earnest. Another great newish DC offering (from Vertigo, specifically) is Saucer Country, written by Paul Cornell and drawn by Ryan Kelly. This is one of my absolute favorites of the year, a fantastic blend of political maneuverings with alien abduction and featuring a Mexican-American lady governor running for president. Basically everything I love at once. It's only three issues in, so catch up!

image from Talking Comic Books  

Comics Movies Nerding: Hey, they get separate categories. Obviously The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man are going to have to step pretty to top what The Avengers pulled out, but I look forward to their attempts. We're kinda living in the golden age of comic book movies and I'm enjoying every attempt that's being thrown at us--even the wretched ones, like X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Here's to the rest of the summer superhero offerings, and I hope we'll see lots more in the future (pssst, Hollywood: more ladies. More characters of color). 
 
 Music Nerding: I am pleased to announce that I have spent my concert fund on tickets to see Nightwish and Kamelot in September. Both are amazing live bands, both are favorites of mine, and...well, let's just say that I hope by the time September rolls around, Kamelot will have found a new lead singer. They're being awfully closemouthed about the whole business considering their tour kicks off very soon and they have plans for a new album. In other music news, Regina Spektor's newest, What We Saw from the Cheap Seats, is coming out next week, and if you haven't already contributed a buck or two to another red-headed pianist's Kickstarter, no time like the present!






What's going on in your fandoms, fellow geeks? Whether you travel to Westeros, Apokolips, or Hogwarts and whether you get there by Floo Powder, a TARDIS, or the Millennium Falcon, travel safely, be cool to your nerdy compatriots, and always know where your towel's at.

I think my optic nerves are strained

Due to excessive eyerolling, of course. But how can something like this be met with anything else? Not to say Andy's post is eyeroll-worthy, but the topic at hand is a further plummet into ridiculousness plaguing the shelves of school and public libraries, and more to the point, why am I being asked to take seriously a study on profanity conducted by Brigham Young University?

Are we going to pretend now that BYU has some sort of objectivity when it comes to a subject like this? Even if the academics who conducted the study aren't church members, they're still under pressure to present data and conclusions which jibe with BYU's goals and image (and which fall within the parameters of the school's position on academic freedom). Of course they're going to suggest that books (books, of all things) should be rated. Think of the children!

(Speaking of the children, here is my teenage LDS experience: reading curse words in books and hearing curse words in music, films, and from real live humans did not make me any more inclined to swear. Indeed I was nigh on terrified of profanity coming out of my mouth. Hell, I still live in fear of letting an F-bomb slip out in front of my mother. Once upon a time in high school my mom critiqued a short story I had written, and her major complaint was that a character took the Lord's name in vain. One of my good friends likes to tell the story of the first time she heard me curse--according to her I blushed like a fire hydrant. By the way, I was nineteen by this point. Surely everyone recalls the horrible things I read as a kid? They must have had a delayed effect.)

Rating children's, middle grade, and YA fiction would provide yet another excuse for parents to not be parents and yet more ways for libraries to be bullied into pulling books off shelves regardless of their buying and evaluation policies. But come on, if you're not policing your kid's reading (or listening, or viewing), no one else should be expected to do it for you. The role of librarians is to provide the most comprehensive array of media possible for patrons and to help patrons select media suitable to their tastes and needs. That is NOT the same as collating a list of all perceivable offenses for each book in the system. As Andy indicates in his post linked above, stickering books with a rating system provides a shortcut for people to be preemptively offended--if the book is OBVIOUSLY bad news, why bother to read and evaluate it? There is no such thing as a rating system that fits everyone and is completely objective, nor should there be. This whole business smacks of the continual underestimation of youth patrons and the increasing bent to fob parental and personal responsibility off on someone else, not to mention the whole distrusting-children angle. Yeah, I don't have kids, yeah, I don't want to have kids, but I was a kid once and one of my very favorite growing-up memories is the knowledge that my mother trusted me and let me use my library card as I saw fit.

And if books were rated by some outside body (a literary version of the MPAA or whatnot), guess what? That would be a barrier to purchase for both the general buying public and libraries. I'm waiting for publishers to scream about this, and hoping they do so. The bottom line for me is that there is no integrity to this study and godfuckingdammit I am annoyed that anyone should have to act like there is. I'm annoyed that this idea of rating YA books has been put into people's minds by an institutional body interested chiefly in backing up its religious overseers. I'm annoyed at the mere thought of giving more opportunities for the willfully ignorant to boil down books (or music or TV or film) to X number of curse words, context-free and inanely reductive. Let's be clear--I detest both the MPAA and the RIAA's Parental Advisory Labels, and I really do not want to see literature be subjected to these kinds of archaic, effectively meaningless systems.

Hurry, put a ring on it!

I promised it'd be all fun all the time until Next Giant Post, but Sulli always gives me food for thought. Currently the chewy topic at hand is marrying in haste. My experience of LDS marriage culture is exactly so--I watched everyone from friends  my age to my mother get married after bare months of knowing the other person. There were some shotgun weddings as well. My hypothesis is that the urge to get married as soon as possible stems from the premium the church places on (temple) marriage; holding a person's salvation hostage is a pretty good way of getting couples hitched. Also worth noting is that once you get married, you can get laid. That's a powerful impetus for young people who aren't even supposed to be masturbating.

Relatedly, a few nights ago my gentleman mentioned that he'd seen some LDS missionaries out and about, which kicked off a conversation about how missions work in the Mormon church. In high school I kind of assumed that I would serve a mission, both because I was laboring under the impression that I was unattractive to all male specimens generally and especially to LDS guys, and because I didn't actually want to get married at nineteen or twenty. Needless to say, none of that came to pass, since I am unmarried at twenty-four and left the church before serving a mission became the road to take. I hope that in the years I've been gone the attitude toward women serving missions has changed from "sweet spirits no one wants to marry even though they're rilly rilly good people" to "life experience and valid personal choice." Has the stereotype of overweight/ugly/awkward/otherwise-non-marriage-material sister missionaries disappeared? Serving the church should not be  considered the second-best option for women who can't get a husband. At the time I disliked that one pole was Get Married and the other Serve A Mission (Because No One Wants You) but hadn't really figured out why. Now it's clear as day. Part of the reason I grew away from the church was that there simply weren't enough options for meaningful relationships. In the year or so before I left there were a couple of articles in The New Era decrying the rise of "hanging out"--the authorities were not happy that traditional dates seemed to be going out the window and that young men and women seemed to be (gasp!) becoming friends before doing the dinner-and-a-movie thing. If the tendency and/or cultural pressure for LDS singles to eye every member of the opposite sex with the Moroni spire glare is diminishing, all the better!

Now, of course, there are many reasons why I am yet unmarried, none of which are satisfactory to my mother. And I can't say for certain if the hasty marriages I witnessed as a younger person were a bad idea (or if the parties are repenting at leisure). I hope they're all doing well and they probably are. But LDS marriage culture as a whole seems unhealthy to me.

My parsing sense is tingling

I sense another megapost coming on (hint: this time it will be about BOOKS!).

Until such time as it appears, I shall endeavor to be as frivolous as possible. To that end, have some baby elephants.

(via Animals Talking In All Caps)  

ALSO. It is my best friend's birthday. Just thought the world should know.

Assembled (Avengers spoilers)

 Five things I liked about The Avengers:

1. Black Widow's expanded, one-hundred-percent-unfiltered-badass role. I liked Natasha  well enough in Iron Man 2, chiefly because I enjoyed watching her and Pepper Potts get shit done while Tony broke things and made an ass of himself, but Whedon and Johansson magnified her greatness by a thousand for The Avengers. Her opening fight scene was my favorite fight of the movie. It's still wonderful for me as a woman viewer to watch a movie where no comments about characters' sex are made. Not one person says anything to Natasha or Maria about them being women, and when Loki trades on what he perceives as Natasha's weakness, he learns part of why she's an effective spy. Also, it's a nice change to see a woman rescuing a man, and rescuing him for reasons other than "I love him!"--Clint and Natasha's relationship may have a romantic component (it would be canonically accurate), but there's more to it and Natasha places a premium on atoning for her sins (a favorite Whedon theme).

2. The team dynamic. Whedon's chief strength is making ensemble pieces coalesce, and that is the sticking point of this film--if the team's interactions hadn't worked, the film wouldn't have worked. The Avengers is a team of opposites and clashing personalities who manage to work together despite themselves. It was fantastic to see that brought to the screen. There are no weak links or bad performances here.

3. Mark Ruffalo's performance. Yes, you may recall how I feel about Ruffalo as an actor, but he did a bang-up--as it were--job as Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk. I'm not real interested in the Hulk as a character (I'd rather see either or both the She-Hulks on screen), but he is an integral part of the Avengers team and had much more depth here than I'm used to reading for him in the comics. I venture that many people loved the "let's do science!" bromance of Tony and Bruce.

4. Whedonisms. Despite his shows' flaws (and they aren't perfect), I'm a Whedonite--I try not to be the super-annoying brand. This film is a treat for Whedon fans: the snappy dialogue, which I found particularly suitable for Tony, especially in how it came out in his nicknames for everyone; the WHEDON'D death (?) scene of a beloved character; and creating Maria and Natasha as important, well-rounded characters are great hallmarks of Whedon. There's also the matter of a bunch of people fleeing as a city caves in behind them...

5. Equal-opportunity asskicking. Related to points #1 and #4, the heroes in this team all get to kick about equal amounts of ass. I don't understand how a viewer could come out of the film wondering about the usefulness/efficacy of Black Widow and Hawkeye (yet these viewers exist), because every Avenger gets to pound evil dudes into the ground (literally in the case of the Hulk, in a scene which had the audience in my theater roaring). It's more obvious when Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk kick ass, because they have giant muscles and serious weapons, but the Widow and Hawkeye are no less capable and get their fair share, which is as it should be.

Two things I didn't like about The Avengers:

1. Sort-of-whitewashing Maria Hill. Cobie Smulders is a great actress and she did a wonderful job as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Maria Hill (AND I really liked the film's development of her character, especially when compared with her on Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes), and I would be totally in favor of an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. film wherein she, Coulson, and Fury supervise Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff as they kick All The Asses (in Budapest, perhaps?), but Maria Hill's ethnicity is unaddressed in some media and Hispanic in others, and I would have loved to see a Latina actress in that role. More broadly, of course, I would have wished for more heroes of color on the team, but that's a wish that's about eight years past being able to come true for this particular franchise. I do hope that perhaps a future Captain America film will feature Falcon (and I nominate Isaiah Mustapha for the role), and that maybe with the incredible success of The Avengers, Marvel might look into other team properties such as Heroes for Hire or The Defenders.

2. What are you doing, Loki? I found Loki's parts of the film somewhat weak. This is a minor nitpick, but I sense that if a viewer hadn't seen Thor, there might have been some doubt as to what exactly Loki's point was. It's definitely not Tom Hiddleston's fault, as he was as slinky-evil in The Avengers as in Thor, but the Chitauri were run-of-the-mill cannon fodder and Loki's relationship to the Other somewhat underdeveloped. for my money his most threatening scene was the one discussed in my final point below--he was never more frightening to me than that, maybe because his power in this film was tied to that Staff of Destiny watchamajigger, and he can apparently be effectively thrashed into the ground by a Hulk like a cat playing with a toy.


One thing I'm still undecided on about The Avengers:


1. Quim. In case you didn't hear Loki/aren't well-versed in outdated British slang terms/have never seen Elizabeth or read Chaucer, "quim" is basically an older version of "cunt." Loki refers to Natasha as a "mewling quim" in his showdown with her when he's inside the Hulk cage. At the time, I thought vaguely that I'd heard the word before (read it in Chaucer at some point) and couldn't remember exactly what it meant, but even still, it's pretty clear that it's a gendered insult. Which...it is. So the question becomes, why is this word here? It's Whedon, so the Cynical Fan part of me says that he was playing his old game of "slip naughty words past censors" which he did in Buffy and Firefly/Serenity. But it's not a naughty word like "fuck" is--it's a specific, gendered insult for which there is no male equivalent. The Let's Examine The Character part of me thinks that Loki would indeed say something like this; he makes a veiled sexual threat toward Jane Foster in Thor, so it's not completely out of character for him to speak to or about women this way, AND he's a villain whose power flows from his words, so he wouldn't be above saying whatever he thought was necessary to grind a person down. The scene itself is also one in which he loses control without even realizing it, since Black Widow is playing him like a harp, and "cunt" is definitely a word that people--usually men--use when they feel out of control. 


The Tired Of Gendered Insults part of me thinks that the scene would have been pivotal enough without use of a word like this, and that having the line be "mewling mortal" or something would have jibed perfectly fine (especially since Loki prefaces his final insult with a lengthy diatribe about how he's going to force Clint to kill Natasha, with threat of sexual assault implied). The Let's Talk About Sociolinguistics part of me thinks that if Loki had called Hawkeye  or another male character a "mewling quim" the meaning would have been changed entirely (to "pussy" rather than "cunt"), which adds another level to the dynamic of the scene. The Take That, Misogyny! part of me sees Natasha hear him, presumably understand his meaning if not the word itself (although who knows, her brain is a magical place), and still go in for the kill, because that is just how little she gives a shit, it isn't the first time she's been called a cunt and it won't be the last. The Whedonite in me thinks that, all else being equal, Loki's conversation with the Widow is the most compelling and frightening segment of the film, the best indicator of Loki's evilness, and signifies that his threats against her (all sexualized ones) are the worst that a villain can bring to bear.

So...I'm not sure how I feel about this word, being in this film.  I am not real bothered by "cunt" itself, but when a person calls me that, it isn't the word that is trying to hurt me, it's the feeling behind it. Having only previously encountered "quim" as a quaint, har har, term for female junk, I'm not sure I WAS aware that it could be connotatively similar to "cunt," but of course that's Loki's (or Whedon's) goal. Erring on the side of optimism, if what this scene gives us IS solely Loki's misogyny and not Whedon's flippancy, I would think the creator might still be aware that the US is not quite ready for that conversation. Context as ever is key, since in some erotic scenarios we have "cunt" being used as an endearment (Lady Chatterley's Lover comes to mind as the classic example) and the same is true of "quim," which is largely cutesy in Chaucer, as I recall. For me as a consumer of culture "quim" was on level with "minge" prior to this movie. I can believe both that Whedon wrote the line intending for it to tell us something about Loki's character AND that Whedon should know that it isn't as cut-and-dried as all that. Ultimately, the line was written and signed off on; ironically I think it would be much more clear-cut if "cunt" had actually been used--and yes, I am one of those who think MPAA ratings for language are absolutely fucking idiotic. Regardless, there's a discussion to be had, and as always, Cleolinda has a thoughtful analysis and a lot of great comments.

*facepalm*

My hometown library system is in the news, and not for a good reason. Hell, is any Florida news ever good? Such an embarrassing state I hail from. Anyway, in the interest of helping the dear folks out back home, I present a partial list of Literature Easily Accessible at the Brevard County Public Library That Will Scar Children for Life and Cause Adults to Abandon All Morality (AKA Some Things I Read Age 13-17 That Taught Me More About Sex Than the Brevard County School System):

The novelization of The Wicker Man

Anne Rice as Anne Roquelaure's Sleeping Beauty trilogy

Incarnations of Immortality and every other fantasy series Piers Anthony has ever written

obvious shit like A Spy In the House of Love and Tropic of Cancer

River God

any number of Zane novels
part of Sin City

Trainspotting (the novel and the film)

hoary classics such as Lady Chatterley's Lover (hey, it was naughty when I was fifteen)

Rubyfruit Jungle 

These are all going to be removed, right? Right? For the betterment of humanity? Right?! 

 

Movie things

Yes, I saw The Avengers. Yes, I have many Thoughts and Feelings, but I am going to put off writing about them until a) more people in the US have seen it and b) I've seen it again. It's a pretty vast film deserving of at least one repeat viewing on the big screen.

Until then, a partial list of how movies are going to break my wallet this summer: Prometheus, Brave, Snow White and the Huntsman, Magic Mike, The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man, Rock of Ages, The Expendables 2.

Always

Hey dudes! It's May 4th--let's talk about Star Wars! Now, surely all of you are aware that yes, in terms of intergalacticy shit I err on the side of Wars rather than Trek, but I'm not sure I've ever really gabbed about my SW feels in depth here before. No day but today, right? /mixing genres

So. Being born in 1987, I arrived on the mortal coil too late for the original Trilogy releases, and when they were re-released, my mother would never have dreamed of taking me to see them (she hates science fiction), but thankfully I had a friend whose dad was an SW nut, and she lent me their videotapes. Yes, videotapes. That was a good choice, since the tapes were ORIGINAL VERSIONS OF THE FILMS (gasp!). None of that Greedo-shooting-first nonsense. I became an SW nut straightaway, spending my days hunting down every EU book I could find at the library and drawing pictures of Han and Leia for my bedroom walls. My mother was somewhat dismayed. Then--oh, then!--Episode I came out, and I saw my first SW film in theaters. Now the older folks among you may be shedding a tear for this blasphemy, but we take what we can get.  Accidents of birth and all that. Of course, being all of twelve or so at the time, I loved it and my adoration of all things Star Wars grew. My first real entrance to participating in online fandom was through the starwars.com Message Boards. For my best friend's birthday a few years later, we checked out of school in the middle of the day to go see Episode II. And of course, senior year of high school, we were standing in line at midnight for Episode III. All the while we had read legions of EU stories good and not-so-good; we'd written a gigantic, awful science fiction novel largely inspired by SW elements; we'd gone to STAR WARS WEEKENDS at Disney World and had our picture taken with Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes; and we'd watched the Trilogy more times than either of us can count. 

Star Wars chess set

For good or ill, depending on how you view the franchise and its creator, Star Wars will never die. It is truly an heirloom, as kids born five years ago to people who enjoy cosplaying as Chewbacca are cutting their teeth on the Clone Wars cartoon (which is great). It was my gateway into science fiction and what it means to be a fan. And for that, dear Mr. Lucas, I am indebted. Being an SW fan can be a fraught experience, but it is a rewarding one.

If you're for some reason flummoxed as to how to celebrate this wonderful day, geek with curves has some ideas! I'll be popping a Han-Solo-in-carbonite ice cube into my whiskey sour later on as I take in Empire for the nathanfillionth time. Go forth and make merry like unto the Ewoks on Endor, and may the Force be with you...always.

I can't even tell if I'm joking

I feel like Cosmo and Glamour's dating tips would be much more interesting if imparted through the lens of shitty 80s hair metal. Therefore I am proud (...) to present the Cock Rock Innuendo Index, A Work In Progress. Basically, look to the rough poetry of Axl Rose, Bret Michaels, and Vince Neil to be sure of whether the person in question is hitting on you and how you feel about that.

The line: "You're [insert typically masculine adjective here] for a woman." The lyric: "Slow down, hold on/you're too fast, too strong/slow down, make it last/take it easy, not too fast/don't let go" ("Let It Go," Def Leppard). The interpretation: He's slightly threatened by your cornhole game, sculpted biceps, or beer-pounding panache, but it's turning him on.

The line: "I thought I'd seen it all, until I met you." The lyric: "I've seen everything imaginable/pass before these eyes/I've had everything that's tangible/honey, you'd be surprised" ("Rocket Queen," Guns N' Roses). The interpretation:  No one's that jaded. Except maybe Chuck Bass...Is Chuck Bass creeping on you?

The line: "Bad girls get spankings." The lyric: "Nobody knows how to tie the simple knots I know/getting weak in the knees/and your bruises are beginning to show" ("Where There's a Whip There's a Way," Faster Pussycat). The interpretation: He may be into bondage or he may just be an abusive asshole.

The line: "Damn girl, you're nasty." The lyric: "You never act the way you should/but I like it/and I know you like it too" ("Talk Dirty To Me," Poison).  The interpretation: Keep talking, it's working.

The line: "Have you ever made out in an elevator?" The lyrics: "Here I come/my mind is set/get ready for love/you're my ten-second pet" ("Ten Seconds to Love," Motley Crue). The interpretation: He wants a BJ in between the hotel bar and his room.

The line: "Such a tease!" The lyric: "You see I'm beggin' you please/saying I can't wait to feel your love tonight" ("Feel Your Love Tonight," Van Halen). The interpretation: The balls are in your court, play them as you will.

The line: "Oh, you're dangerous. I know about girls like you." The lyric: "Like a fallen angel/with the devil's charm/she promised paradise/with the kiss of death" ("Kiss of Death," Dokken). The interpretation: Tread with caution--he might be playing coy or he might be a skittish, needy, once-burned Dokken aficionado. 

The line: "You're gorgeous. Are you here with someone?" The lyric: "You got it/but are you getting it?" ("Armageddon It," Def Leppard). The interpretation:You get to decide if a) you ARE indeed here with someone; b)c) you're not here with someone but now you have someone to go home with. you're not here with someone but this person isn't your speed; or

Changing views of sex and sexuality in SFF

"The Chaste Hero/ine" was the title of a panel I attended at a convention last weekend. It was a very interesting panel, one of several featuring Tamora Pierce (the con's major doubleplusbonus for me), but it didn't quite go in the direction I anticipated. If I'd had longer than 45 minutes to gather my thoughts, I might have stuck my hand in the air and said something; as it is, I will have to do my thinky thawts thing here on Ye Olde Blogge.

One thing that struck me immediately about the entire topic is the value judgement inherent in the word "chaste." It is a word intimately tied to concepts of purity, virtue, and moral goodness. Historically, in fiction and in life, those who are chaste are good and those who aren't are bad. For me this is the most salient point when talking about SFF protagonists, since by and large speculative fiction has moved away from overt portrayals of this value system. And the panelists did briefly talk in this direction when they discussed Galahad, but the point was never explicitly made or expanded upon that his power, stemming from God, was directly tied to his sexual purity. This is true for other male characters of the Arthurian cycle, including Galahad's father Lancelot, the wizard Merlin, and arguably even Arthur himself. Both of these men's powers diminish drastically after sexual contact with women; in some instances, Lancelot blames his tryst with Guinevere for his failure to obtain the Holy Grail, and Merlin is imprisoned (or dies) after his power is drained by his protege Nimue.  In some versions, the decline of Arthur's kingdom can be read as originating in his cuckoldry, or at least his unwillingness or inability to punish Lancelot and Guinevere. In these and other instances, magical, spiritual, and physical power stems from bodily (sexual) cleanliness. This runs the gamut from actual celibacy to faithful monogamy and sometimes ignores male-male sex as "not counting" (certainly there are examples, in fiction and in life, of female-female sex being considered to "not count"). The most bald examples are of male fantasy heroes dedicating their sexuality to a deity in return for power.

Although Virgin Power (as TV Tropes would have it) exists for female SFF characters--the Keepers of Darkover, for instance--the god-human-sex-life relationship for female protagonists tends to take somewhat of a different tack. In mythologized history, there are examples of women mystics who derive (thinly veiled) sexual experiences from their spiritual experiences; Teresa of Avila and Joan of Arc come to mind. In place of sexual appetite being swapped for physical, spiritual, or magical power, spiritual fervor and physical chastity lead to sexual ecstasy. In fiction, the first warrior maidens appeared as equal to their male counterparts in all ways save one: sexual prowess and appetite. It's safe to say that "manliness" has been and is often still tied to boning everything in sight, and many SFF heroes have voracious appetites. The first SFF heroines outside of the damsel-in-distress, exotic-Other, and evil-enchantress molds were strong, capable, good, powerful...and still virginal, so that something might be left for a man to conquer. Eowyn is an example of this early on in fantasy literature (Red Sonja is another who combines Virgin Power with Rape As Backstory, and who despite her sultry appearance has very strict rules about when the sexin' happens). We have departed a good deal from the stock story of ladies doing "men's work" until the right man comes along: many speculative fiction heroines have active sex lives these days and many are treated with a great deal more nuance than "exotic dusky-skinned temptress," "maiden a-questing 'til it's time to settle down," "pure wide-eyed damsel," and "femme fatale sorcerer-dominatrix." Some are even lesbian or bisexual or pansexual (sarcasm italics).

And sometimes, male and female heroes alike are not sexual at all--and this is a facet of their personalities, rather than being a hinge on which the entire story turns. Sulien in Walton's The King's Peace is raped at the outset of the story and afterward manifests no sexual desire of any kind. She is effectively asexual, saying that she was "not made that way" (for taking pleasure in sex). This is barely notable in her culture, which is one of relative sexual permissiveness. She is also  referred to as a "walkurja"--a Valkyrie, the archetypal warrior maiden of Norse myth. Tarma and Lavan Firestorm, from the Valdemar books, are celibate for different reasons--Tarma is referred to at one point as "sexless" by dint of being a Shin'a'in Swordsworn (she also has sexual assault in her history); Lavan is lifebonded to his Companion, who is not human, and he has no interest in human partners. Paks, in Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksenarrion, is asexual, and arguably Bilbo and Frodo Baggins are as well. These examples are significant to me because they indicate things beyond choice dictating sexual activity. Most of the panelists' and audience discussion of hero/ine celibacy was restricted to why protagonists choose to have sex or not, but that doesn't have to be the only route an author takes and it is certainly not the whole story for people in real life. Paks specifically bridges the space between "I have dedicated my sex life to my god(s)" and "I have no sexual urges"--she is a paladin and has no sexual desires to begin with. Over-reliance on sexual tension--no matter what form it manifests in--is, according to my tastes, found too often across all literary genres.

I guess my rambly point is, there are different tropes at work depending on what book you're reading. SFF in many areas has turned away from the all-consuming need to make sex The Big Point Of Everything (we finally got past Heinlein), coming to recognize that there are ways of writing about a character's sex life and/or sexuality without discarding or ignoring other points of interest. 


The "chaste" panel kind of tied in to another panel I attended about LGBTQ characters in speculative fiction. There is a growing market for genre fiction featuring LGBTQ characters as well as a burgeoning library of books which do just that. Best of all, it seems that, like sex in general, differing sexualities are moving from ZOMG PLOT POINT! or ZOMG SEXY WINDOW DRESSING! to being part of well-developed, thoughtful characters. I read a review of Walton's Small Change series once which complained about how many gay characters there were--and not even major characters, just side characters! This was actually something I enjoyed about those novels, because heterosexuality is not and should not be portrayed as the default. When I walk through a crowd, not everyone around me is straight. From early exploitative examples of male-gazey lesbian trysts in pulp novels we have created a legacy of such treasures as Ethan of Athos, some of the Bordertown stories, China Mountain Zhang, Swordspoint, and Huntress, to name just a few.


Something I have noticed in my reading journey is that trans people are also getting more of a presence in fiction, and more of a thoughtful, realistic one. The first arguably trans character I encountered in fantasy was in the absolutely redonk If I Pay Thee Not In Gold (the first and last Lackey/Anthony team-up) in the form of the demon Ware, who shifts from male to female depending on who s/he was sleeping with. Not exactly a nuanced representation.  There is also somewhat of a tendency to treat trans characters in terms of magic or extreme technology (scientific marvels of post-human or trans-human tech, for instance) instead of "real people" characters. But we have other examples to look to--Okha and Nestor's relationship in Pierce's Bloodhound (her earliest heroine, Alanna, has themes of transvestism and gender performance if not transgender issues); The Left Hand of Darkness comments on human gender roles through the lens of androgynous aliens; Joanna Russ' The Female Man and The Adventures of Alyx center, not unproblematically, around what it means to be a woman; Lilith's Brood and other stories by Octavia E. Butler examine sex and gender in human, post-human, and alien societies; and River of Gods and especially Brasyl by Ian McDonald feature third sex or trans main characters. Science fiction and fantasy have long been natural playing fields for speculation and innovation regarding the human form, societal and cultural roles, and gender strictures. Where once upon a time this meant men writing about the sex they wished they were having, more and more it is coming to mean truly fantastic and speculative literature, exploratory and progressive fiction. Heterosexuality and monogamy need not be the norm in fantastic fiction. Triads such as those found in novels of Walton and Simmons, gay protagonists, asexual heroes, and trans characters--these are things I want to see in genres which purport to imagine all that can be imagined and to look forward to the futures we want to shape.

Rising

This weekend was Easter, of course. No longer being of a Christian faith and having a convention to attend in Columbus, I didn't really remember until today, when I realized that all my favorite candy would be on sale at the grocery store. A few of my beau's classmates invited him to church with them, which (I believe) the former Catholic declined. If we had been at home, we would have had lunch or dinner with our families, and that's really what I miss the most. As zany and irritating as our respective clans may be, the weight of cultural holidays is centered around family and togetherness, especially for secular people, atheists, or people whose religious paths don't celebrate that particular holiday. For many years when I was growing up, Easter Sunday was the day that we took our family photograph, and it still feels somewhat strange to not see my mother's family that day. 

But Easter still happens here in Ohio, and in many ways the season is more overt; maybe because of the preponderance of giant old Catholic churches in my new area and the streams of people I saw tracing the Stations of the Cross, maybe because of the extravagant flowers and blooming trees everywhere. As Christmas is the season of preparation and anticipation, Easter is the season of promises making good and tangible results. It is easy to feel inspired by the newness around me,  it is simple to enact the rites of spring in the everyday, and that is my religion.

Leave me alone

There's kicky little saying that Mormons love to parrot regarding apostates: "They leave the church, but they can't leave it alone."

Aside from how incredibly short that sells the church in terms of spiritual and cultural impact (like, you guys realize you're saying that the church is totally easy to ditch and completely forget about, right? THAT SHOULD NOT BE A GOOD THING), this adage also ignores the church's tendency to never leave anyone alone ever, not even after they've died. I don't remember if I talked here about how my mother had given the missionaries in Tampa my new cell phone number and how that made me feel--it pissed me off. A very simple invasion of privacy. Furthermore, by that time I had not been inside an LDS church in five years.

Who can't leave whom alone?

Thursday evening I got a charming email from my lady parent detailing the coming apocalypse as brought on by President Obama declaring "peacetime martial law" (I know, I know). I replied briefly and vulgarly. In her response to my brief vulgarity, my mother reminded me that this weekend is General Conference! AS IF I COULD FORGET, since she reminds me of this twice a year. Now, sure, if I had cable I'd be slamming down shots every time an old white dude mentioned Joseph Smith, but I don't and so I'll just have to conduct my weekend the way I normally do: a little library, a little grocery shopping, maybe get laid.

ALAS.