Robin Anne Reid, Texas A&M
“Holy Family: Divine Queerness in Bujold’s Chalion Series”
creative writing, new media, critical theory, fantastic literatures—esp. Tolkien
Alexander Doty Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon.
Definition 6—establish spaces not described by or contained within….
Queerness = overt
Textual queerness may not be intended by author.
Queerness may not be in characters, but in text.
Dream visions of heterosexual males about deities is example of textual queerness.
Source: “Evolutions of Fantasy Series in …. Rings and Bujold’s xxx” –book? Article?
Male protagonists are codedly feminine—mutant or disabled men as well as all women.
Wright “queerly inflected” about Bujold
All characters talking about are men and dead.
5 deities created
Bujold said she “wanted a different religion, one with some parity built in.”
Holy Family breaks hetero-normative
Queers because bastard is result of mother and a demon
Differences played out on bodies of men
Five holy points =
Wound not controlled, bleeding uncontrolled ? women’s bleeding
Self-consciously simple… but stylistic choices in visions… lacking in sf novels
Male body penetrated, feminization
Thinking about selections for printing out for handout
Feminine coding of men … binding the male body to female = rape, torture, disability
No academic discussion of why male heterosexual characters are discussed in terms of queerness.
Realized how Bujold handles male characters…
In Chalion male character is created like fanfiction. Comfort hurt fiction. Protagonist is hurt and someone else is comforting.
Bujold was a fanfiction writer.
Think Bujold writing about males’ bodies is related to how folks relate to comfort hurt fanfiction.
Relates to author Pieuw? (pieu, pew?) female writers incorporated tropes in orig historical tropes
New question: Are women incorporating hurt/comfort tropes in fiction?