'Hip, hop, hai. You're gon die!'

Day Twenty-Seven: A female character you have extensive personal canon for

Presh (Galax Arena, Gillian Rubinstein)

I first read Galax Arena when I was ten years old, and I think I've been writing personal canon for Presh in my head ever since. I know where she comes from in China, I know how and why she was taken by Project Genesis 5 into the Arena, I know why she chose to stay silent and close her eyes to the cruelty taking place around her, I know what strategy she developed in order to survive as long as possible (make no friends, give nothing of herself away, trust no one, practice her acrobatics forever, never fall), and I know all her complicated feelings about Allyman. Although it was mostly jossed by Terra Farma, I also worked out what happened to Presh after the last page of Galax Arena, and remain adamant that it was a better conclusion to her story than what we saw in Rubinstein's sequel. (I also maintain that Leeward, Liane, Mariam, Allyman or Presh would have made much more interesting narrators and protagonists than Joella.)

I suppose you could say that the character has fascinated me for nearly twenty years. At this point, the character as she exists to me is probably 50 per cent Gillian Rubinstein's creation and 50 per cent my own invention, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest.

( The other days )

Women's work

Day Twenty-Eight: Favourite female writer (television, books, movies, etc.)

Kate Elliott

She's my favourite because her books are wonderful, her female characters are excellent, and she is empathetic and thoughtful about the wider context of her work. But above all, I love her for this:

Even in patriarchal societies of the past (and present!), women who might otherwise have been banned by custom or law from partaking in the public life of politics, power, learning, work and so on still had personalities. I can’t emphasize this enough. People–even women!–have personalities regardless of how much or how little political power they have. People can live a quiet life of daily work out of the public eye, and still have personalities. Really! They can still matter to those around them, they can matter to themselves, and they can influence events in orthogonal ways that any self respecting writer can easily dream up.

Furthermore, with a little careful study of history, one discovers that women found ways to accomplish plenty of “things” big and small, personal and political. Maybe they did it behind a screen, or around the corner, or in the back room or in a parlor, or ran the brewery they inherited from a deceased husband, but they did all kinds of stuff that was either never noticed or was elided from historical accounts. So much of our view of what women “did” in the past is mediated through accounts written by men who either didn’t see women or were so convinced (yes, I’m looking at you, Aristotle, but you are but one among many) that women were an inferior creature that what they wrote was not only biased but selectively blind. Even now, in “modern” day, so much is mediated by our assumptions about what “doing” means and by our prejudices and misconceptions about the past.

That's why I read, that's what I look for in my fiction, that's what I want in my female characters. Kate Elliott gets it.

( The other days )