Tell me something you love about SF/F

[marydell]

Books, comics, teevee, movies, games, artwork - what's something wonderful - a work or a moment -  you've seen or read that makes you feel good?  What did you love about it?

Here are a few of mine: 

In Elfquest, the Hidden Years, when Cutter and Rayek have a big fight, Cutter forces Rayek to face the damage he's done by sharing a mental image of his family when it was intact.  It's Cutter, Skywise, Leetah, and the kids Ember and Suntop (or whateverthehell his name was/is), all asleep naked together in a heap.  It's a beautiful image of love and a family that's entirely comfortable with each other and functional.  I love this because my world and my life are so much not about being comfortable.

In Larry Niven's story Neutron Star, the narrator escapes a certain death by smart analysis of his circumstances.  I read this story when I was an adolescent and it helped me to understand the value of thinking carefully when the situation is particularly dire.

Francois Schuiten's amazing book-related poster series. I ran across "The Last Pages" in a comic shop and snapped it up; it's now got a central spot in my living room. It's evocative of so many stories and questions about stories.  How did he get up there? What is the book? Is civilization over? Etc.  I'm also deeply intrigued by "Vol de Nuit." 

In The Matrix, when Trinity runs around the walls and then kicks the shit out of everybody. I love me some badass women.

Speaking of which, Princess Leia came into my life when I was 12.

In Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, there is an advertising jingle so catchy it's illegal.

In Neuromancer, Molly's glasses are implanted into her face.  Wearing glasses can be badass! WOO!

In They Live: "I'm here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." 

In Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In The Sky, the moment where we discover [jung gur genafyngbef unir ernyyl orra hc gb] is extremely awesome.  So is the concept of focus.

Donato; Just...everything, but the link goes to a page where you can see a painting go through its stages.

Neil Gaiman's Sandman.  I like most things about this, but the overall feeling of gloom and beautiful woe is what I really love.

Speaking of woe: Sephiroth.  Aeris. The first time a game left me gaping in disbelief. (Spoiler video here--Final Fantasy VII)

Beauty by Ruth Thomson. Per the artist's husband, who works the booth at Wizard World, this image is a portrait of Sleeping Beauty after her long-sleep ordeal; now she's too freaked out to sleep so she wanders around her overgrown castle in a daze. I have a print of this in my bedroom. 

What about you?  (Avoid spoilers! - rot-13, hide, or vague 'em up, please.)

Comments

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Do you mean Vetch or Ged? His appearance is the first thing you learn about him, but it's how Ged's physical appearance gets mentioned for the first time. I love that as well, it's a really masterly way of handling the subject. And are you as infuriated as the rest of us about how that issue was treated in the films (which I steadfastly refuse to watch)?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Le Guin wrote a good essay (http://slate.com/id/2111107/) about how pissed off she was about the whitewashing of her characters.

I couldn't watch the miniseries because it started off with some kind of ridiculousness about priestesses keeping an ancient power confined, or something. I bailed before the first scene was over, because it obviously had nothing to do with actual Earthsea. Also, Lana Lang as Tenar.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I know, I've read it, she's got it on her website. Basically, she got screwed. I bet they buggered up the love story, too. It's great to see a writer speaking out against that sort of thing, especially a writer who handles it so sensitively in her work and is completely aware of her position as a white author speaking for non-white peoples. I love the way that in The Left Hand of Darkness Genly Ai is black, which on the earth we live in is what would make him stand out and be disadvantaged in many societies. But on Gethen, it's his gender - completely normal to us - which makes him the alien, and the simple matter of his height that makes him stand out in a crowd. I've occasionally talked with elfbystarlight about what a wonderful film LH would make if it was done really well, with the fabulous eis und schnee setting and the oral tradition of myths and the exquisite subtlety of the relationships, and how unutterably appallingly it would most likely get treated. Hermaphrodites from outer space having monthly orgies!

I now have to stop and squeal a great deal, because my mother has just sent me a photo of me, aged about seven, dressed up as a mermaid for a fancy dress competition, including a plastic lobster on a lead. Also I have to scan it in and show it off, and then perhaps leave it on ghost_of_a_flea's noticeboard for him to find when he gets in from work.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Not Ged, I'd worked out early enough that people in the Archipelago weren't white. Vetch, however, is black.

I was deeply angered at the way the SciFi Channel handled the series. Nothing but white people in a world the author specifically made predominantly non-white -- so much so that the white Kargads stood out for their whiteness -- that was more than a bit much.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I was just a bit confused as you said "figure out", which made me think it was something you need to deduce, and we're explicitly told that Vetch is black within a line or so of meeting him. I honestly can't remember when I worked out that Ged wasn't white, whether it was the Kargad attack early on (and I envisaged them as Vikings, who would stand out against a number of ethnic groups, not just those with darker skin), or more likely when Le Guin drops it in that he's red-brown and starts creating a background for the pattern of skin colouration in the Archipelago.

The way the SciFi channel handled the series sounded appalling in so many ways, but the whitewashing must undoubtedly be the worst. OK, she didn't make the series specifically about race in the way that Left Hand is about gender, but it's still an important feature and one that should not be screwed with. I bet they'd make Genly Ai white if they filmed Left Hand, too, come to that, and it would be on a similar level of unacceptability. I've a feeling the Gethenians in Left Hand most closely resemble Inuit from the descriptions, but I could be extrapolating from their lifestyle by mistake.

It's not so much that race is a non-issue in many of Le Guin's worlds, it's that she's deliberately showing us a society in which it is a non-issue, instead of assuming whiteness as a norm. In the one book of hers that I can think of offhand where it's a major issue, Four Ways to Forgiveness, she reverses the hierarchy so that the "dusties" are the slaves and the darker-skinned you are, the higher your status. Also she makes their skin tones blue-tinged instead of pink-tinged, which leads to some odd cover art.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Sorry for causing confusion.

LeGuin has fairly consistently been good about making race either irrelevant, or, when it is important, reversing our expectations.