Worldcon 2019: Introduction to SFF Romance

[spindizzy]

• Jeffe Kennedy said "We are seeing the blossom of a tree that's been growing for a long time," referring to some of the old guard of the genre (e.g. Ann McCaffrey, Tanith Lee, even Twilight as new readers' introduction to paranormal romance! Media specifically incorporating the female gaze, although I'd argue that this probably wasn't new.) Fandom introducing people to SFF erotica, which meant that they wanted it in published fiction.


• Darlene Marshall talked about how monster-fucking and paranormal/alien/monster lovers is "about inviting the monster into your bedroom, which most women have already done," which brought the conversation around to synthesising things that scare us into something that we can control. Not gonna lie though, from the number of questions marks scribbled on my notes, I don't think I appreciated the conflation of monster and foreigner in this idea, with the explicit linking of both of them as capital-o Other.


• Apparently a lot of the people who write SFF romance are recognised more in the romance community than they are in the SFF community, which somehow doesn't surprise me.


• One of the audience questions was something like "How do you feel about aliens/robots/monsters as a stand-in for real life marginalised groups?" and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM WAS IN FAVOUR. Three of them because they believe that both scifi and romance have enough diversity that they can co-exist! One because talking about marginalisation in a covert way totally gets people onside, right? I have no idea what my face did but the moderator did not pick me to ask "WHAT IN THE FLYING BIGOTED FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" so I guess I'll have to live knowing that four people who don't know the state of their own fucking genres got to speak on a panel about them. Like, for real, LAST YEAR was the first year since about 2014 that the Hugos didn't have a Puppy slate of whatever flavour. The RITAs are STILL being racist in their judging, three years minimum after the problem was reported! And you think we have ENOUGH people with real life marginalisations?! And the one who thought that metaphors worked – wow. The people you're talking about as needing a metaphor like that to sell them on diversity? WON'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT THE ISSUE TO RECOGNISE IT AS A METAPHOR. Like, the most charitable interpretation of this that I can think of is "Maybe these authors all read really inclusively so maybe they ARE seeing 'enough' books involving people with real life marginalisations" but... I don't know how you can look at either SFF or romance and say "Yep, we're good," unless you're not seeing it. We're not there yet. I don't know when we WILL be there, but it's not now, and four authors who present as white and cis cannot say "Yes, it is okay to talk about marginalised issues obliquely to lure in the bigots" because it is not okay.


• *huff* *puff* *gets off soapbox*


• Recommendations: Diane Duane, Patricia Briggs, JD Robb, Tasha Suri, Amanda Bouchet, Jennifer Estep, Jaqueline Carey, Linnea Sinclair, Rachel Bach, Marjorie Liu. ... I do want to point out that at least half of this list was specifically recommended in a discussion about diversity, and there's maybe two people of colour on this list. No reason.