Queer Fiction Books

Reading Vlog #1 - Holy Shit...

I’m reading a novel that was written in 1915 and has a whole paragraph just casually discussing sexism, objectification, asexuality and the impermanence of love. I don’t care if the characters are supposedly ‘despicable’, Ford Madox Ford was onto something.

‘The Good Soldier’ by Ford Madox Ford, on page 84 of 179.

This is probably weird to ask, so here it goes. Where there ever any heroes of Egypt like Herakles, Bilgamesh/Gilgamesh, Arjuna, or Jamshid? I noticed that I have never really heard of any heroic epics out of Egypt and I was curious as be to why that may be.

Culturally, heroic epics simply weren’t a genre within Egyptian literary tradition. I think the closest you can come to such a “hero” within the Egyptian body of literary works, is the character of a magician, like Djedi or Si-Osire, or Isis herself.

There are for example the Demotic stories with protagonist Setne Khamwas (based on the fourth son of Ramses II, Khwaemwaset). Setne Khwamwas has two adventures: one in which he finds the Book of Thoth in the tomb of a prince called Neferkaptah, and another in which he meets a magician from the time of Thutmose III, aforementioned Si-Osire. Of course since these are Demotic texts, they’re very late in Egyptian history. The copies we have are from Ptolemaeic and Roman Egypt respectively.

Then there’s the Westcar papyrus, which is a Middle Kingdom text that includes a few “miracles” the 4th Dynasty magician Djedi performed during the reign of king Khufu. This text wasn’t meant as an heroic epic either; rather, it’s one in a tradition of programmatic texts. They reflect the outlook of the class and time in which they were created, but they are also literary works.

But like almost all Egyptian literature, the subjects of these works are either fully mortal (think the protagonists from The Eloquent Peasant, Sinuhe, The Shipwrecked Sailor), fully divine (e.g. the giant snake on the island of the shipwrecked sailor, the two brothers in Tale of the Two Brothers), or the spirit of a deceased person (Neferkaptah in Setne Khamwas). And like most Egyptian literature, there’s a greater lesson to be learnt from the narrative. E.g. in the Shipwrecked Sailor, the sailor admonishes the official he serves to speak the truth of what happened, and The Eloquent Peasant imparts on the reader the importance of good speech.

thinkin about my (openly gay) lit professor today saying, “one of my favorite historical anecdotes is the time that Oscar Wilde was in America, at the same time that Walt Whitman was active and writing poems about sticking his tongue down other men’s shirts, and Wilde went to Whitman’s house exactly one time and spent several hours there, and ever since all these historians have been like ‘what could they have been doing???? it’s such a shame we’ll never know…’ and I just…. we know. the only question now is who was the top.”

Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

I know Steve is really talented with his shield and is like an expert with it 

but just imagine him smacking it in his face 

or tripping over it

or waking up in the middle of the night and he shuffles off to the bathroom only to step on the edge of the shield and it smacks him in the shin and he curses loudly enough to wake up the other Howling Commandos who just sit up and start laughing at the way Steve is holding onto his leg and swearing 

Discovering that you’re 10 days behind the Discovery of Witches RTR.

Me: I can fix this.

for no particular reason and certainly not because of a certain shitbag author publishing yet another shitty book, here’s a list of science fiction/fantasy books by marginalized authors.

with special focus on trans, indigenous, jewish, asian and/or disabled authors because these are groups she-who-must-not-be-named has been particularly shitty about!

note: i got the idea to do this from @queerpontmercy​​​ - hope you don’t mind! i’ve read most of these, and i’ve tried to organize them by subgenre. now go read!

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi. Young adult SFF written by a black nonbinary author, with a black trans girl main character.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger. Young adult speculative fiction written by a Lipan Apache author. Main character is an asexual Lipan Apache teenager.

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan. First book in a YA fantasy series in an Asian-inspired setting by a mixed-race author of Malaysian descent, featuring a F/F romance.

Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore. A young adult fantasy about two sisters in a cursed family, written by a Mexican-American nonbinary author.

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones. A contemporary, coming-of-age fantasy about a boy and his werewolf family, written by a Blackfeet Native American author.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo. First in a high fantasy novella series by an Asian-American author, featuring a queer cast including a nonbinary main character.

The Black Tides of Heaven (Tensorite Series) by JY (Neon) Yang. A fantasy novella series with nonbinary and lgbtq+ main characters, written by a nonbinary Singaporean author.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey. Pulp Western science/ dystopian fiction novella with an all-queer cast, written by a nonbinary author.

The Golem & the Jinni by Helene Wecker. Historical fantasy combining elements of Jewish and Arab folk mythology by a Jewish author.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. Fantasy by a Jewish author with Jewish main characters.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. Fantasy about witches and scientists trying to save the world by a trans author.

Jade City by Fonda Lee. First in a fantasy series in an Asia-inspired setting written by an Asian-Canadian author.

Bone Universe trilogy by Fran Wilde. Fantasy trilogy featuring cast of disabled characters written by a disabled author.

Parable of the Sower (Earthseed series) by Octavia Butler. Science fiction / dystopian series written by a black disabled author.

Controversial Truths About Ancient Egypt Masterpost

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

Noses (and ears, and arms) broke off statues and reliefs for a variety of reasons, none of which are “there is a widespread archaeological conspiracy to hide the Egyptian ethnicity”

When you realize your overpowered goody two shoes, co-worker laughs in the exact way that the mild manner, clumsy, loveable oaf Clark Kent you dated, fell in love with, and then dumped because you knew you could never tell a civilian much less a reporter about your villgantly night “job”. Resulting in ruining the best thing in your life.