you won't make yourself a name if you follow the rules

Hekatombaion 29

Okay, so "Full of Briars" by Seanan McGuire, the October Daye novelette just came out in ebook (US-only, apparently, sorry) a day or two ago? Has the SWEETEST ending. :)

So I asked seananmcguire whether there are trans characters in October Daye. My headcanon that yes there are but nobody gives a fuck because transformation magic is a thing: TOTALLY ON THE MONEY.

Sweet.

This eight-books-and-counting series by Seanan McGuire is like the fantasy series my feminist heart always dreamed about. It's urban-fantasy faerietale-noir. Toby Daye herself is a kickass snarky protagonist—she's a mortal-world private investigator, living half in Faerie because she is herself half fae; she's a knight of the Faerie duchy her loyalty belongs to, and (because she's a changeling, not a pureblood fae) she earned that title; she's a daughter estranged from her mother and a mother estranged from her daughter, and Amandine and Gillian fascinate me nearly as much as Toby herself does.

Tybalt, the local King of the Court of Cats, and later [spoiler redacted because not all of y'all have read that far and some of y'all might now want to]? Canonically bisexual. I forget in which book he mentioned marrying a mortal woman, but take that as proof of his attraction to women, and go read "Forbid the Sea" as proof of his attraction to men. Also, [spoiler] and Jazz are a canonically happy-queer-ladies couple. There is also an unhappy-queer-ladies couple, Li Qin and [spoiler], but the unhappy there is just the part we see—I presume that they and their kid were quite happy together before [spoiler] died.

Also, Jazz is from India. I'm not clear on Raj's ethnic origins but, between that name and his being canonically brown, I presume he is also Indian. Li Qin is Chinese. Dare and Manuel are Latina. McGuire put a lot more effort into faerie-race diversity than human-race diversity, but the world is only generally white, not wholly white.

(Transgender people don't seem to exist in this world. This is a disappointment, but hopefully McGuire means to fix that: there's a canonically transgender character in her Indexing series-to-be. McGuire is also aware of, and belatedly disappointed in, the general whiteness of the world she has created here, and I'm told she did better in InCryptid. I haven't read more than the first half of the first Incryptid book—I got distracted by something and haven't had a chance to go back.)

The plot of the series is Alex-catnip. You know how J K Rowling casually dropped Sirius Black's name into chapter one of book one, and Wormtail's missing toe into the chapter where Harry met Ron, and in book three Sirius is a hella major character and Wormtail's missing toe is crucial to the resolution of the book's plot? And also in book one the minor antagonist turns out to be someone we've been rooting for for a while, and in book three we spend the back half of the book cheering for someone we've been rooting against? McGuire does those. McGuire does those lots.

Basically y'all should totally go read all eight books and as many of the short stories (list linked above; list not updated to reflect the publication of a Tobyverse story in Shattered Shields) as you can get your hands on. And then write me Yuletide treats :D

Comment here if you want to play, and I will give you three-six fictional characters or couples couples that I associate with you, and you make an entry in your journal talking about those couples and fanworks that you wish the universe would create for you.

somnolentblue gave me October Daye, Anna/Ruby from Supernatural, and Odette and Odile from Swan Lake.

I really want the universe to create me the fanwork where Toby figures out that there's a reason the hope chests do what they do, and a reason she and her mother can do (and Gillian presumably could have done) the exact same thing. I'm sure there are reasons. I even think I know what those reasons are. But I don't have time to write this fic myself. (If I ever do, it'll be part of Changeling's Choice.)

I also want the spinoff series featuring Anna and Ruby, resurrected, with some perspective on the whole Lucifer deal (I'm convinced Ruby had no idea Lucifer planned to destroy everything), and ready to kick some monster ass.

Re Odette and Odile: Basically Mercedes Lackey's The Black Swan, only with more Odette PoV (she is not a PoV character in the novel) and less no rape committed by a PoV character with whom we're supposed to sympathize (Siegfried).