Abalidoth

Ahhhhh thank you! *blush* It's been a little while since I updated here, so yeah, I should toss a link to Chapter 2 out here. I think you'll enjoy what's coming.

*quietly sits down and continues to write Shasnah fic*

Only if I get to create a snarky no-nonsense trans lady Marshal NPC to keep you all in line. Howdy! I was considering just letting it slide, but it's nice to have a place to point if someone has questions about me. (Especially if it's gender stuff.) Hey Quiver! XD

I'd totally be down with canon poly characters in Brandon's work; I think that'd be rad. It's hard to write -- I know from experience -- but well worth it. I'm... actually really optimistic re: Brandon and queer characters. I know it'll happen slowly but I know it'll happen, y'know? That said, I think Shadows of Self is realistically our best shot in the near future. Crossing my fingers Ranette gets a romance arc. (Double-crossing my fingers hoping it's Marasi but that's neither here nor there.) (I actually legitimately ship Axies and Rysn though. I have no shame.)

Hello, complete stranger who is not one of my closest friends and who I have never met!

I'll have to check them out! I know Feather talks about them a lot.

I've already posted a fair bit but I realized I never did one of these, so. Hi, I'm Gavin, or Gav, but I go by Abalidoth online. I've been reading Sanderson since 2009 or so, and I've read everything he's put out so far (except the short story in Dangerous Women, and Steelheart) I'm mostly active on the Tumblr side of the fandom, but I poke my head over here once in a blue moon. I'm agender -- that means I don't identify as a man or a woman. I use ze/hir/hirs pronouns, but I'll answer to any gender neutral pronouns. (They/them/their is easiest for a lot of people.) If you have any questions about nonbinary gender identities, feel free to ask. I'm a writer and a worldbuilder -- I run the Sydney Scroungers campaign (that our gracious mod Feather plays in) and I'm currently writing Periapsis, a Stormlight AU fanfic that's linked in my signature. EDIT: Oooh, forgot to mention the tattoo. My avatar is my Aon Ene tattoo, I got it about a year ago. Sarene is one of my faves, and I love that it means "wisdom", so it was an easy choice.

Yeah, I thought the four-page graphic story about Leinton's sex life was a litle mu... Wait, that's not something that happened. Leinton wasn't asking you to consider one, individual person. He was asking you to please remember that bisexual people as a whole exist, and not use "attracted to women" as evidence against "attracted to men". If you think that "I am bisexual" constitutes exhibitionism, I don't know what to tell you. Absolutely, categorically not what he was saying. What's insulting to bisexual people isn't just not thinking a character is bi. It's using evidence that they're attracted to one gender as evidence that they aren't attracted to a different gender. If you're really gung-ho to prove Kaladin's not attracted to dudes, whatever, go for it. (Although I'm not sure why someone would restrict their shipping options like that.) It's when you start out with the ingrained assumption that he cannot be bi, therefore he must be either gay or straight? That's the problem. Again, nobody is asking you to make special considerations for any individual person. We're asking everyone to stop making inaccurate and offensive assumptions about an entire group. Bisexuality is not something to be pitied, no. But biphobia and bisexual erasure are things to at least acknowledge. If you don't think you should at least make a cursory effort to understand someone else's problems, especially when they're directly telling you that they're unhappy being erased? Then I'm very sorry for you.

There's a very big difference between respecting someone's privacy, and willfully refusing to empathize with them. You're falling to the latter, here.

Ayyyyy new Scroungers readers! At this point we're gonna need a fandom name. I nominate "Aeron chairs". >.>

"Queer" has been reclaimed as a specific umbrella term referring to, basically, "not straight". The reason I was using it instead of "gay" is that it's a lot more accurate -- if (to keep this marginally on topic) Kaladin were to date Renarin, he wouldn't be "gay". He's expressed interest in women -- he'd probably be something approximating bi. Using the term "queer" lets you keep from making assumptions like that. Think about it this way: Being a straight guy, pretty much every fantasy novel out there has a protagonist that looks like you. You just said yourself that you relate better to that kind of character, right? How many fantasy novels do you think that a person who isn't straight can relate to on the same level? Imagine if every book on the fantasy shelf had a main character you had trouble relating to like that. And every time you brought the problem up, someone dismissed your remarks with "well, they're all just like me, so I identify with them just fine!" It doesn't matter whether you would be more likely to pick up a book with a gay protagonist, because for you there's already a plethora of options. It matters because there are people waiting their whole lives to read a book in their favorite genre with a protag that looks like them. Yes, ideally, there would be a lot more LGBT fantasy authors getting published. (Incidentally, the reason you don't see them has more to do with publisher bias than it does with statistics, but that's a digression...) But Brandon is one of my favorite authors, and I don't think it's out of line for me to want him to write a protagonist that I can relate to a little better.

I am, actually, writing my own fantasy novels. Slowly, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to be publishable, but... and yes, most of them have nonstraight main characters. Trust me, I know the direction that change is coming from, and am doing my part -- that's not what I'm talking about here. I have a vested interest in seeing Brandon do queer characters right. And as such, I've been following pretty much every newspost and signing question he's ever answered about the topic. Many of those questions were in fact asked by some of my close friends, who have a similarly vested interest. And in that knowledge I say this: he's said some things, especially recently, that make me very optimistic about the direction that representation in his work is going to take. What I'm saying is, give him some credit. Not only was that post from three years ago, but the part where he mentioned being uncomfortable was mostly in the part from seven years ago. He's said a lot of stuff since. That said. Why exactly would having a main character who isn't straight "ruin" the book? Including a queer character "just because" is only bad if that's their only personality characteristic. Brandon is a good author with a knack for complex characterization, and I don't think even at his least nuanced he would let a character be reduced to a single attribute like that. I didn't read it as a criticism of Brandon, and I'm not offended, but I do think you're not giving him enough credit. And the number one thing that will make him more interested to include representation is if his fans talk about it and make their interest known -- which is exactly what I'm doing. And I'd rather do that through exuberant shipping than through dry academic rebuttal, so let me bring this back on topic. I am firmly on Team Kadolin, and their interactions were one of my favorite parts of WoR. Am I the only one who sees "bridgeboy" turning into a term of endearment over the course of the book...?

That's exactly my point, though. Brandon has been making an effort to include queer characters (Drehy, Ranette, and at a signing he talked about transgender Returned on Nalthis, etc) and, once he dips his toe in and proves he can do it well (which we're still waiting to see Drehy's romantic arc to be sure about that, but I'm optimistic) what's to stop him from breaking some boundaries with main characters? Queer people should be allowed to be heroes, not just sidekicks.

Renarin or Adolin -- the former would be a very sweet and slow courtship, the latter would be a very bantery and tense one. Why is everyone assuming Kaladin isn't bi, hmmm? (Okay, seriously, think about it. If a female character had gotten herself thrown in prison for Kaladin's sake, you all would be touting it to the Tranquilline Halls as true love.)

I considered including a straight character, but their sexuality just wasn't important to the plot, you know? In all seriousness... notice that this kind of question doesn't get asked of the thousands of movies and books and TV shows that come out every year that have no queer characters at all. No, for the most part, those aren't questioned. It's only swinging the pendulum back in the other direction that gets weird looks. Was it a conscious decision? Well... as a genderqueer person, sexuality and gender politics are deeply personal to me, and will continue to be until the day I can walk out my front door presenting how I want to present without fear of violence. And my particular chosen way of changing the world is to write about these issues, have people think about them, and see if I can get some discussions going. Periapsis is just a story, sure. I wanted to write about some of my favorite characters in a fun setting, and tell the kind of story I want to write. It's not a political tract, or a manifesto, or anything of the sort. But every writer faces a thousand little choices within every page of every story they write -- how they view the world affects those choices and colors their story. And with my little choices, I'm trying to make the world a better place for myself and people like me. In short, the question you should be asking is not "Why did Abalidoth put so many queer people in hir story?" but "why do other stories have so few?"