Minor rec and rant

[gaudior]

So, I am deeply fond of Tales of MU, thank you weirdquark for pointing me at it lo these many months ago. It's a daily-updated serialized online novel about a half-demon and her friends' first semester at college. There's a tremendous amount of queer, kinky, poly sex, which is fun, as well as a pretty well-worked out magical system (the author seems to be having a great deal of fun with making a world almost exactly parallel to ours in most ways, but in which the basic laws of the universe actually make science unrealistic. She doesn't play as much as I might like with second-order consequences, because she's fairly bound by the parallels, but she also puts a good bit of thought into it, and that's fun). Interesting characters, very good character development (the gradual development of the golem's free will and sense of identity is really well done and made of awesome). The plot sprawls a bit, which I think has to do with it being posted as it's written, but overall, I'm hooked. (Also, she uses "non-human sentient species" in many ways as a metaphor for race-- but she also deals with racial differences among humans, and colonialism, and how race-relations among humans interact with the lives of non-human sentient species, and for that, she is made of win.)

The thing I don't like, though, is the comments thread. Because while the text itself strikes me as very awesome in regards to sex, gender, power, etc, the commentors come off, often enough, like frat-boys. And I am really sick of people calling the protagonist a "stupid slut," or hating the trans character or the very poly character while praising the monogamous straight white male to the skies. Because all of the major characters are, in my opinion, interestingly flawed, but also sympathetic. And it kind of sucks to see people reading about these people through lenses that they're not questioning. I mean, maybe they will question them a bit, after a while? But I'm not seeing it there. And it annoys me.

So: read the story. Skip the comments.

OMG my colloquium (dissertation defense) is TOMORROW OMG OMG OMG OMG GAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!

--R

Comments

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

I didn't think I could be happier, and then I found a praise-post for TOMU....with an UTENA ICON.

Trade?

And I hope my commentary hasn't been among that you've hated. :p

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Oh, for grin, and you're totally welcome to my icon! The ones I use tend to be more reflecting my moods/themes than being "things I find cool," but I like yours a lot. Who designed it?

And I hope my commentary hasn't been among that you've hated. :p

Nah-- you're always very reasonable and intelligent and such, and I'm glad you're there. I just got annoyed for the last few chapters at the "OMG Mack is such an EVIL ALCOHOLIC ABUSIVE DEMON and Two is such a STUPID BRAT and STEFF TRIED TO KILL TWO BY GIVING HER PERFUME! and OMG POOOR IAN THE MAGNIFICENT WHO DESERVES SO MUCH BETTER OMG!" When, in fact, they're all pretty awesome, they're all dealing with pretty awful backstories which mean that none of them are brilliant at relationships or self-esteem, and they're all making lots of mistakes in the process of doing the best they can. Which is why I like the story so much. But in the comments-- I feel like yeah, Ian's being very cool lately, but people are cutting him a lot of slack when he does stupid/entitled/insecure/bigoted/sexist things (like leaving his handcuffed girlfriend alone at a party she didn't want to go to in the first place), and the other characters are getting whaled on. And it annoys me.

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

It's the TOMU logo. :) I fangirl.

It annoys me too. (In fairness, a lot of that is a couple of posters who are louder than they are sensible.) But that's why I hang around, to cut the garbage (and occasionally to issue a smackdown.)

You can catch AE's thoughts on Issues over at shangy_feminism sometimes, if you're interested. Welcome to the madness! (Do you have the RSS feed?)

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

(also, I'm all curious-- how did you find your way here?)

[popelizbet.livejournal.com]

A lady has to have a few secrets. ;0

(Someone tipped me that there was a TOMU review that mentioned Das Commentariat in particular. Not sure how they found it.)