James Herbert's "Others" has disabled people as hero, love interest, and imprisoned innocents, and is pretty good. Just wish that sort of thing was more widespread and happened in the super-gory horror too.
I have not read the book. I am not going to read the book. But said book is being advertised by a writer on my twitter list who follows me and it makes me face palm so much. It is a paranormal romance. With were cougars. Our Heroine is temporarily in charge of the pack, acting as regent until her little brother can become the alpha. Of the pack of extremely macho were cougars who don't want to listen to our Strong Willed Heroine because she is not a dude. The love interest is of course a Bad Boy of some description that Our Heroine doesn't trust at all. The name of the book is "Don't Call Me Cougar." I just. Cats don't work like that? I mean you have your lions, but cougars are...solitary? And I never really get the feel that male lions are actually in charge so much as pretty much freeloading. I mean you could make an argument that the "packing" behavior and the weird machismo and heir to the throne bullshit is a obviously a monkey-brain thing but still. That's not how you cat.
With wolves, well... wolves don't work that way, but at least they're actually pack animals. Cougars? Not so much. I suspect the 'plot' was chosen entirely for the pun in the title?
I've been trying to work my way through The Mallorean because like The Belgariad, it was a childhood/early teen favorite even as I got a little older and got creeped by the world building, which was informed by the writer(s) being of a conservative bent and there being a great deal of what I refer to as *"fluffy misogyny" as well as certain issues involving Fantasy Racism and No That's Literally Not How That Works. When I was younger I was better able to get through it, but especially after reading Eddings "The Losers"** I've found it really hard to read even the bits I like. (And the only reason I'm reading it is because I have goddamn fic bunnies, for which I blame one of my favorite fan fic writers who wrote a BRILLIANT fic that actually made Taiba/Relg make sense. OtherCat wants to write fixit fic too!) --Silk, a gut stab is the LEAST survivable wound at the med tech level you're at. You frankly did Junior Urgas a favor with the instant kill shot. --So. Much. Fucking. Ableism. And you could make the argument that the reason the characters are all ableist fucks is because of the tech level, but you're left with the feeling that narrative and therefore the author is making judgement calls. --I am still mad about the Morindim being devil worshipers. Mostly because they seem to be "Indians"? Soo fantasy racism. --Guess what genius, withdrawal literally doesn't work like that. --I don't understand the random judgment on drugs=teh bad. But alcohol apparently okay. I just don't. This is mostly because my war on drugs was mostly me getting highly pissed off at someone who implied that I ever sampled recreational weed. (actually, no one ever offered because I was an antisocial little cuss.) --I feel so sorry for Zith because her enclosure is too fucking small. It's a fecking BOTTLE. --The one Grolim who is apparently hideous because he has patches of lighter skin of darker skin. (the exact name for that I don't remember. --Would it have hurt so much to have Actually Religious characters? Huh? Something beside crazy bigoted Alorns and crazy bigoted Grolims and Relg. --The Grolim who is apparently hideous and even other Grolims think she's ugly because scarification. (Despite scarification apparently being an artistic tradition??) It is sad when something you loved as a kid is something you can't read because the writer is Wrong. *Fluffy Misogyny is kind of that bullshit "men and women think and act completely different and women are naturally good at womanly things and men are naturally good at manly things/boys will be boys tee hee," stuff. **Conservative moral fable to how terrible welfare is in which our former Has becomes a Has Not due to a traffic accident. Makes his social worker's life a living hell, pretends to be alcholic, judges women who are having kids to stay on welfare (which is a myth Eddings you dumb fuck) , talks a runaway into returning to her parents because she couldn't have had a good reason to run away from home because in Eddings land parents are never abusive I guess? Losers is horrible and probably deserves it's own post, but it's been years since I read it.
yeeeah, I read those in like fourth grade and had a grand old time and I'm pretty sure if I read them again now I would be filled with hatred.
Barbara G Walker is my current automatic rage button. Warnings for everything: Feminist Fairy Tales Amazon
Confusing sentence pointed out in another review on Smart Bitches Trashy Books: why would everyone within earshot be unable to take their eyes off someone?
A discussion on Smart Bitches Trashy Books brought up an issue with when historical accuracy is appropriate and when it is not. Specifically, if the story is about the offensive historically accurate thing, that's fine, but:
Not terrible books, but - why does this author focus so much on this lady peeing, why does she contemplate her pee so much - different book: HUMAN LEGS DONT WORK LIKE THAT
I think I need to share this here. Put it this way, the author is not good at being artsy, and I don't know enough about scat porn to judge whether he's good at that, he's certainly not good at concealing that his work IS scat porn, and IMO nobody on earth would ever be good at combining the two.
More bad porn stuff, not all from the same thing: -In scenes with characters of African descent, "black semen" gives entirely the wrong mental image. I'm picturing octopus ink here. -Isn't a "mound of cleavage" a contradiction in terms? -While it's about as much not my gender-weird fujoshi self's kink as any hygienic/consenting/of-age kink could be, I can see the appeal of a fictional world in which men are entirely replaced by women with penises. It is, however, very annoying when female characters within that world keep talking as if women with penises are somehow unusual. "Girl-dick" as opposed to what, if there are no men? Do male animals exist in this world and is the implication that the women who use terms like that have been fucking them? Talking about how wonderful it is for someone to have both penis and vagina when it's socially expected that that's who you'll be having sex with is jarring and brings to mind a certain infamous badfic line except with the opposite emotion.
