between the rock and the cold, cold sea

To be specific, riffing off Jaime's post here, concerning women authors and the recent SF Signal Mind Meld.

Borrowing her idea, I give you a list of women authors on my shelves here below.

Small prints and assorted caveats:

Authors are listed alphabetically by last name, with apparent gender of co-author noted where applicable. I've also noted where I'm aware of pseudonyms-in-use. This list does not include any non-autobiographical nonfiction or any poetry. The symbol ^ denotes non-SFF (mostly historical mysteries, with some modern mysteries/crime). The symbol $ denotes authors whose main presence on my shelves is in urban fantasy. The symbol ! denotes authors whose presence on my shelves includes works of SF.

And now, I give you.... (badda-boom-chish) The List!

List Of Authors Who Happen To Be Women Whose Books I Possess:

Aguirre, Ann !
Alexander, Alma
Andrews, Ilona * (pen-name, male-female co-author pair) $
Armstrong, Kelley $
Asaro, Catherine !
Ball, Margaret
Barr, Nevada ^
Bauer, Sabine C. !
Bear, Elizabeth !
Berg, Carol
Bickle, Laura $
Bishop, Anne
Black, Holly $
Borchardt, Alice
Bradley, Marion Zimmer !
Bray, Patricia
Brennan, Marie
Britain, Kristen
Briggs, Patricia
Brown, Rachel Manija
Bujold, Lois McMaster !
Bull, Emma
Caine, Rachel* (pen-name) $
Carey, Jacqueline
Carriger, Gail
Cashore, Kristin
Charnas, Suzy McKee !
Cherryh, C.J. !
Christensen, Elizabeth !
Clamp, Cathy (co-author with initials) $
Cochrane, Julie (co-author with male) !
Collins, Suzanne !
Cooper, Susan
Crispin, A.C. !
Cunningham, Elaine !
Czerneda, Julie E. !
De Pierres, Marianne !
Downum, Amanda
Duane, Diane !
Eddings, Leigh (co-author with male)
Emerson, Kathy Lynn ^
Evans, Linda (co-author with male) !
Fallon, Jennifer
Fletcher, Jane
Flewelling, Lynn
Fortune, Julie * (pen-name) !
Franklin, Ariana ^
Friedman, Celia S.
Furey, Maggie
Galenorn, Yasmin $
Gee, Emily
Gentle, Mary !
Gilman, Laura Anne
Goodman, Alison
Griffith, Nicola ^ !
Guon, Ellen (co-author with female)
Hall, Sarah !
Hambly, Barbara ^
Hamilton, Barbara * (pen-name of Hambly, Barbara)
Hamilton, Laurell K. $
Harris, Charlaine $
Harrison, Kim * (pen-name) $
Hendee, Barb (co-author with initials)
Hobb, Robin * (pen-name)
Hodgell, P.C.
Hoffman, Nina Kiriki
Huff, Tanya ! $
Hunter, Faith $
Hurley, Kameron !
Jacoby, Kate
Jones, J.V.
Kerr, Katherine
Kiernan, Caitlín R.
Kiernan, Celine
Kirstein, Rosemary !
Kittredge, Caitlin $
Kritzer, Naomi
Kushner, Ellen
Lackey, Mercedes
Larbalestier, Justine $
Larke, Glenda
Lee, Sharon
Lee, Sharon (co-author with male) !
Lee, Tanith
LeGuin, Ursula K. !
Lindskold, Jane
Lisle, Holly
Liu, Marjorie M. $
Lo, Malinda $
Lowachee, Karen !
Malan, Violette
Malcolm, Sally !
Marillier, Juliet
Marr, Melissa $
Mead, Richelle $
Miller, Karen
Mitchell, Syne !
Mills, K.E. * (pen-name for Miller, Karen)
Moesta, Rebecca (co-author with male) !
Monette, Sarah
Moon, Elizabeth !
Moriarty, Chris * (pen-name) !
Murphy, C.E. $
MacAlister, Katie $
McCaffrey, Anne !
McDermid, Val ^
McDonald, Sandra !
McGuire, Seanan $
McIntyre, Vonda !
McKenna, Juliet E.
McKillip, Patricia A.
McKinley, Robin
McLeod, Suzanne $
Norton, Andre
Novik, Naomi
Pierce, Tamora
Priest, Cherie $
Rardin, Jennifer $
Rawn, Melanie
Reeve, Laura E. !
Reichert, Mickey Zucker
Reichs, Kathy ^
Richardson, Kat $
Robb, J.D. * (pen-name)
Roberson, Jennifer
Robins, Madeleine E.
Robson, Justina !
Rosenblum, Mary !
Ross, Deborah J. !
Rowling, J.K.
Rusch, Kristine Kathryn !
Russ, Joanna !
Sagara, Michelle
Saintcrow, Lilith $
Sayers, Dorothy L. ^
Scott, Holly (co-author with gender-neutral) !
Scott, Manda
Sedia, Ekaterina
Shannon, Merry
Shearin, Lisa
Sherman, Delia (co-author with female)
Sherman, Josepha (co-editor with female)
Shinn, Sharon
Sinclair, Linnea !
Sizemore, Susan $
Smith, Kristine !
Smith, Sherwood
Spencer, Wen
Stevermer, Caroline
Thompson, Victoria ^
Thurman, Rob * (pen-name) $
Traviss, Karen !
Tyers, Kathy !
Vaughn, Carrie $
Viehl, S.L. * (pen-name) !
Walton, Jo
Weis, Margaret !
Wells, Martha
Wentworth, K.D. !
Wilce, Ysabeau
Williams, Liz !
Willis, Connie !
Wood, Suzanne !
Wrede, Patricia C.
Wurts, Janny

---

That's 165 names, folks. Perhaps slightly fewer discrete persons, but not by much. Let's call it 160 individuals. My personal library runs to something like 1400 volumes - yep, I'm a hoarder - and I'd say it's at least 60% female-identified.

If I've got time, I'll run through the male names tomorrow and run a numbers comparison.

This has probably been done in far more humorous ways. Still. I think I'll share.

---

ACT I: THE WEDDING OF THETIS AND PELEUS.

Enter STRIFE, bearing the golden apple of the Hesperides.

STRIFE: Somebody drop this?

APHRODITE: What a lovely apple. It belongs to me, of course.

ATHENA: You're wrong, sister. It's mine.

HERA: Now, girls. As Queen of the Gods - need I say more? - it's obviously mine by right.

They commence to squabble and recriminate.

ZEUS (wearily): Hermes, dear boy. Isn't it about time we set the doom of Troy in motion? Go find Paris, and let him judge which of these scheming harridans ought to have the immortal apple. He'll annoy at least two of them. That should be moderately entertaining. And at least Thetis won't come complaining to me that I let the family ruin her wedding.

HERMES: Okay, Dad. Ladies, we're going to find Paris Priam's son, because this is Thetis's wedding, and Dad doesn't want another family war, k?

HERA: If we must.

APHRODITE: Is he handsome?

ATHENA: This is not wise, Father.

Exit HERMES, shepherding the goddesses.


ACT II: A MEADOW ON THE HILL OF IDA.

Enter Hermes and goddesses.

HERMES: Paris, old man! Zeus needs you! Which of these lovely ladies should receive the golden apple of the Hesperides? Don't dally, now.

PARIS: Er. This is... unexpected?

HERA: You can see that the apple is obviously mine. Clearly. But if you should need to know more - well. You look like an upstanding young man. And a prince too, hmm? I can make you king over all Asia, you know.

ATHENA: That's what she always says.

HERA: I do not!

ATHENA: You always say that. And then Father gets huffy. And we all spend a week keeping our heads down until he tires of flinging thunderbolts, or until you take back whatever you promised without his consent. Listen to me, Paris. I am wisdom in war. With my favour, you'll lead armies and gain victories the like of which men have never before seen.

APHRODITE: Oh, like you know anything.

She undoes her robe.

No woman in Greece can match me, but you know what? Helen of Sparta comes close. I'll see to it that you marry her. Screw Menelaus - on second thought, don't. He never sacrifices to me properly.

PARIS (boggling): Er. Yes. Aphrodite. Yes. Her.

APHRODITE: Hah! (To Athena) Take that, you frigid hag! "I'm so great, I win big battles, I can wield a spear" - you're just like a man, with your ugly bronze - no, wait, I take that back. You don't know what you are. Loser.

ATHENA (tiredly): Put your clothes back on, you wanton Kuprian... thing. Father's not going to approve of this, you know. He likes Menelaus. So do I.

HERA (aside): Paris is going to meet a sticky end after this, I guarantee it. Hermes! Where are you? There you are! I need a lift back home. No, let your siblings make their own way back. It'll do them good, and if they miss the wedding party, at least we won't have to listen them sit in opposite corners and snipe at each other. It upsets that useless Hephaistos - not that I care, but he stomps so when he's annoyed.

Exit Hera and Hermes.

PARIS (dropping his shepherd's crook): Helen! I'm coming, Helen!

Exit Paris.

ATHENA & APHRODITE turn their backs on each other and exit in opposite directions.

APHRODITE: Frigid tank!

ATHENA: Don't make me ask Hephaistos if I can borrow that net!

FIN

I average something less than a videogame a year. Nearly always an rpg: I play for the story, and the replay value on the ones I finish tends to be high.

Anyway. I've been playing DA: Origins since December 2009, hooked from word one. (I've lost count of playthroughs, so they must be many.) So when DA:2 came out last Friday, I was very much there.

I'm now about eighteen or nineteen hours of gameplay in, at the start of Act 3. And... I'm not sure how I feel about it, yet.

Spoilers follow, if you're bothered.

What Bioware is doing with the frame story, attempting to tell a game that progresses through time instead of space? It's ambitious, I grant.

But frame stories are one of those things that either work really well or fail hideously. The frame of Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History works because the protagonist of the frame is also discovering and reinterpreting the events of the main story. The frame of The Princess Bride film doesn't work very well because it's not only completely unnecessary, it adds nothing to the experience of the film.

A frame can either be a complete story in itself which adds something to the experience of the main narrative, or it can be an attempt to manipulate the audience which, best case scenario, doesn't actively detract from the experience of the main narrative.

DA:2's frame is too manipulative to work for me. And it sits awkwardly, because as the player-character it is your decisions which are being recounted by someone else in the frame, and from the beginning, you have the sense that it can't end well. If things can end well, then the local kinder gentler version of the inquisition shouldn't be that interested in you.

I really don't like feeling as though I'm being set up for a sequel from the word go. It makes me irritated. And I find the inquisition's interest in the player-character (in the frame, as it is constructed) to be a lazy way of increasing in-game tension. The events of the main narrative should, dammit, have enough tension to carry themselves. If they don't? People, you are not writing your game right.

So much for the frame. The effect of telling a game through time means jumps of a year or three years at a time between sections of gameplay and main-event narrative. This worked reasonably well for me the first couple of times, because of the nature of the player-character's situation and the state of local power-politics. The third time - folks, you do not just defeat an invasion and kill off the local ruler and then jump forward in time three years with a, "Nothing much happened until some time later," for lo, this is not logic. It is rather irritating unlogic, in fact, and disinclines me to trust your ability to pull off meaningful choices in the remainder of the narrative.

Irritating, sure. But I'll give Bioware a pass on time-compression issues, because I think this might be one of the first times anyone's tried to pull off a videogame rpg set over the course of a decade. They'll improve with practice. (The frame story, I carry a grudge over. Because it could be so much better. And if not less blatantly manipulative, at least most interactively manipulative.)

Functional things which irritate me: the subtitles are bloody tiny (I play on the Xbox. Possibly this is a platform-related issue) and the menu-screen is squint-worthy and awkward compared to the intuitive tabs of DA:O. This is seriously annoying: half the time I don't know what I'm doing during levelling up because I can't see the icons properly.

So much for my cavills. I quite like the new combat mechanics, although they took a bit of getting used to. The fact that the player-character's decisions have consequences over time is quite wonderful, and adds greatly to the experience. The dialogue wheel is a definite improvement over bland old lists of conversation options.

The best thing about the game? The other party members, the flirting, and the random snark. Merrill, voiced by Eva Myles, is particularly hilarious but also moving. Conversations involving the pirate Isabella frequently go places... Yes, those places.

(An exemplar: "Men are only good for one thing. Women are good for six.")

It is trivially easy to wander around Kirkwall and environs with not a single male party member, without even noticing it, which is noteworthy in and of itself - I went half an hour with Aveline-the-tank, Merrill-the-mage, Isabella-the-pirate, and the player-character before I realised. At which point I sat back and said to myself, "Self, this is pretty damn unprecedented." (It's possible in DA:O, but not entirely natural, since unless you play the player-character as a tank, you kind of need one of the boys for that. Unless you have the Golem DLC. (And it was possible in Mass Effect 1, but there you only dragged around a party of three.))

I'm not saying DA:2's treatment of gender is above reproach. But Bioware has a track record of making me feel as though I'm being sold to, not past. And so far, DA:2 is not only good about putting women in the party, it also puts women in positions of power in the environment, as well. It's nice to see Knight-Commander Meredith breaking the old glass ceiling.

I'm pretty sure I'll have further thoughts when I actually finish the game (whenever I have, you know, time again), but for now, I've said my piece.

I've heard it said you can tell as much about a person by their bookshelves as by their conversation. So what about books they'd like to have on their shelves?

Suggestion for a meme: post a list of the books you don't have on your shelves but would like to. Justify your choices!

(Yes, I am still slightly over-happy from yesterday. And wanting to share good cheer with the world. Quite possibly this state of being is an invitation to murder.)

The user-friendly internet is a temptation to very long lists. So mine are here. As to the why, it seems I've grown rather fascinated with classical drama and philosophy, far beyond my darkest expectations. It's really quite startling.

I was always fasinated with the history. That, at least, hasn't changed.

...Maybe my sore shoulder is screwing with my brain. I find myself wanting to pick an argument over the nature of god and the idea that human morality is or ought to be created by an external force.

(I also want to pick an argument with Kant over his universal morality schtick, but the man's dead. So is Sartre, so I probably should let my resentment at his particular flavour of existentialism die a natural death.)

Unfortunately, the people I would like to argue with would never listen to me. Besides which, that kind of argument makes me angry rather than enthusiastically engaged.

So I wonder, could I interest some denizens of livejournal in a peaceful discussion on the meaning of Life, The Universe, and Everything?

(Probably you should ignore me, and I should go and lie down until the strange feeling goes away. That would be the sensible thing to do.)

hawkwing_lb: I have a location. Setting, check. Character, check.
hawkwing_lb: Plot...
jmeadows: who needs plot when you have setting?
hawkwing_lb: oh, well, I have explosions.
jmeadows: that works
hawkwing_lb: They'll have to do instead
jmeadows: that's just like plot
hawkwing_lb: Nonono, plot is things blowing up in sequence
jmeadows: pfft
hawkwing_lb: random explosions is like setting, only more so
hawkwing_lb: :-)
jmeadows: okay, so you start on the left
jmeadows: and end on the right
jmeadows: that is blowing things up in sequence
jmeadows: and if you can make things blow up in a pretty spiral?
jmeadows: double points
hawkwing_lb: Spirals are thematic
hawkwing_lb: A little bird told me, so it must be true
jmeadows: they are only thematic if you use more than one spiral
hawkwing_lb: (You should blog this, I think.)
jmeadows: (and if they're thematic, you should use at least twenty-five)
jmeadows: hehe
hawkwing_lb: Paris go Boom!
hawkwing_lb: City of Nuclear Light!
jmeadows: Ooo, that would be pretty


See also: http://jmeadows.livejournal.com/405500.html