The Aether

Fairy tales are fucked up, man.

I don't just mean the old ones where people got killed and tortured and all that shit. I mean the messages they send. And not just how heteronormative they are. Let me explain.

I read a very intriguing article on Cracked where the author stated that part of the reason men get angry at women so often- and resort to throwing 'slut' and 'whore' around so often- is because from birth, they're raised to believe that they will get the girl. Think about it. In teenage fiction, in fairy tales, how does it end? Boy gets girl. Girl will unfailingly fall for boy, she probably won't have a personality to speak of, there will be no doubting or mistrust or actual romance or any of that shit. Boy gets girl. That's the end of it. And then the guys grow up and don't get the girls. The girls don't fall into their arms and fuck them at first sight. Many simply aren't interested. Others aren't into guys at all. Many think they're horrible beings of chaos. The boys' expectations are crushed. They are left frustrated and confused. This does not make them happy.

Some of them turn out to be gay, and then they have to deal with a world that doesn't endlessly support the idea that guys can be in love. This can end badly.

And the thing is, it's not just the guys. The girls grow up believing that they'll find their Prince Charming, and then they come to the realisation that many guys (not all, but quite a few) are crude, dickish, sex-obsessed wankers. The ones they think are Prince Charming are probably arseholes. The ones they won't look at are probably the closest thing they'll find to a Prince Charming. This does not make them happy.

Some of them turn out to be lesbians, and then they have to deal with the same things that the gay guys do. This can also end badly.

And some of them turn out to be bisexual, and then they get to deal with looking for Prince or Princess Charming, and quite possibly getting shit from all sides at once.

My best friend once told me about a play she was in at high school. The play was Picnic at Hanging Rock, and though it was an all-girl school, they decided to get some drama students from their brother college in to play the guy parts rather than giving them to the girls. Those guys basically were in heaven, surrounded by girls who couldn't pass up the opportunity to meet guys who weren't their friends' arseholish little brothers. My friend, who I believe was always gorgeous (in her opinion, she was gawky), got ignored by the guys. A couple of months ago, she encountered some of them in a bar. My friend has grown into an absolutely gorgeous figure of womanhood, while the guys, (she said) were fugly. And she felt pretty damn good, thinking about how they ignored her for being unattractive and contrasting it to the way she looks now.

The point of this is... well, it's a long story. See, last night I was thinking about a plot for a story where Apple, a girl, steps in to help out Mango, a guy, who is in a really bad place and needs help that he isn't getting. (Names are there for lulz.) With Apple's help, Mango gets his life back on track. They fall in love and get together.

And then I had a thought. "Hang on," thought I. "Doesn't this sound like a reward for Apple? 'You helped him get his shit straightened out- congratulations, your reward is him.'" 

That was a pretty fucking disturbing thought. At first I thought, 'But that's not true. Spending so much time together helped them to form a bond. They've been friends and helped each other and such. It's not like she's his therapist and they had no other relationship but still got together." But the more I thought about it, it did seem like it was true: girl helps guy, and her reward is a relationship with him. Hell, it happens in reverse in a lot of stories- girl gets the guy as a reward for overcoming the plot, no matter how much or little interactions and attraction there was beforehand.

And then I thought of one of my former favourite series, David Eddings' Belgariad/Malloreon. I wrote an entire post about how fucked up that series is (along with almost everything else he wrote), and one of the major reasons I hate it now is because of the Prophecy. The Prophecy of Light basically spends the story making sure that the shit that needs to get done gets done. It rewards people who carry out these tasks with long, happy marriages.

Maybe that doesn't sound too bad. But to me it sounds like sexual slavery. "Sorry, I don't care about your opinions- some chick helped me out, so now you have to marry her. Cheers!' 

I can think of a couple of examples- in Rick Riordan's series The Heroes of Olympus, one of our protagonists, Hazel, initially lived in 1942. If she'd been a normal girl, she would have grown up and married her best friend, Sammy Valdez, but she wasn't, so she ended up dying and coming back seventy years later. Sammy married another woman and had a decent life with her, but he never forgot Hazel, and Hazel never forgot him. I know the world isn't fair, but I'll quote Harry Dresden on this: That. Wasn't. Right. The plot took away Hazel's right to a decent life and dicked her over in more ways than I can count. And what about Sammy? Poor bastard lost his best friend and future wife. 

Another example is in the Belgariad itself- had Garion been a normal guy, he would have married his childhood friend Zubrette, who he was half in love with when the story starts. He and the others go back to the farm in the fourth book, and he has to let her down by greeting her with an expression of affection and brotherly love, but no romantic love- and it breaks the poor girl's heart. Garion has to marry Ce'Nedra, you see, despite the fact that he's way too good for that manipulative fucker and he probably would have had a better life with Zubrette.

Yeah, Ce'Nedra is by far one of my least favourite characters ever. She's a complete bitch with pretty much no redeeming features whatsoever. I despise her.

Hell, even Polgara (who I also hate- someone as horrible as she is should not be allowed to take care of kids) gets an example. She stayed for years in Vo Wacune, an Arendish city, and eventually fell for one of the guys fighting to be her champion (they both fell for her, BTW). Unfortunately, the city was destroyed, and her man with it. God knows Polgara couldn't have a romance- no, she had to raise all those fucking kids and be untouched for Durnik. Jesus Christ.

You see my point? The story takes away your choices. The story dicks over everyone so you can fuck the person it thinks you should be fucking. The story will rape your mind so you have to like it.

Oh, and there's no gay people, of course. That would upset the natural order.

Seriously, if I ever have kids, I'm writing them a completely new set of fairy tales that encourage peace and love and LGBT people. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that romances need to be handled carefully, otherwise all you're doing is turning A into a reward for B. Try showing a romance formed from mutual love and respect and trust. Don't show a romance where B gets A because of how awesome he is. Give A a say in the matter. Or if you do, point out how bad those kinds of romances are. Please. Because otherwise, the implications with pile up, the bad taste in the readers' mouths will worsen and the books will get thrown at the wall.

And for fuck's sake, get some LGBT characters in there, people!