Strange Geometry

Every quarter or so, I have to change the password on my work computer and the requirements are so complex and ridiculous I periodically forget what I’ve changed my password to. For instance, this time around, my password needs at least one capital letter (A-Z), a group of four lowercase letters (a-z), at least one symbol (!, %, etc.), and a group of at least 3 numbers (0-9). I realise the point is to make it difficult for hackers to access the sensitive information on my computer, but surely it isn’t also to prevent the employee from accessing it as well.

While assembling my bookshelves last night, I chatted with Loveseat and Wicked Cool Riley. I love having friends who work in the publishing industry; I get to hear good gossip or news about two seconds it’s on Publisher’s Marketplace.

LOVESEAT: One of my boss’s most prolific authors, the one with a billion pseudonyms, is writing a new book–
JJ: Wait, she’s the one who wrote that vampire romance sitting on our shelf that you brought, right?
LOVESEAT: Yeah, she also wrote that erotic retelling of Phantom of the Opera.
JJ: Oh, I’ve heard about that book on the blogosphere.
Loveseat: Well, she wrote one about The Count of Monte Cristo and now she’s working on an erotic retelling of Robin Hood.
JJ: …is nothing sacred anymore?
RILEY: I just wish they’d stop turning fairy tales into porn.

I don’t know, I happened to love Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls. I actually have no objection to Loveseat’s boss’s client writing her erotic novels, but Robin Hood seems a little out of left field. The Phantom of the Opera makes complete sense to me, it is a gothic novel after all and sex is always on the edge of the gothic genre, even if it doesn’t happen on the page. All the elements are there: the virginal heroine (Christine Daaé, Lucy Westenra, etc.), the monstrous/supernatural/otherwise beastly or grotesque pursuer (The Beast from Beauty and the Beast, Erik the Phantom, Dracula, and even Rochester from Jane Eyre), the naive corruptible hero (Jonathan Harker, Raoul de Chagny, etc.), with fear, horror, and obsession mingling with fascination/attraction to the monster. The threat of “possession” inherent in some of these novels is really the fear of rape, in both its abduction and sexual violation connotations. I understand why people would read and write an erotic retelling of a gothic novel (believe me, I read Susan Kay’s Phantom when I was 12, so I can’t talk), or even medieval romances like Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot (put down Mists of Avalon for me as well), but I am having difficulty conceiving of Robin Hood as an inherently sexual story. Let us be badasses, steal from the rich, and give to the poor! Afterwards, let us celebrate by gang-banging Maid Marian and then an orgy with the Merrie Men? (We are Merrie, after all, and therefore queer!)

Robin Hood was my very first literary crush. Very. First. I was four years old. I loved his devil-may-care attitude that concealed a heart of gold, his casual disregard for the authority, his adherence to a higher moral standard, and besides, he was cool! (I am starting to see where my characterisation of Raphael is coming from.) Robin Hood was a total fox. A literal one too in the Disney version. I used to watch that version repeatedly when I was a child and when my brother was young, so did he. Robin Hood is apparently a big hit with our family. I’m a huge fan of the street-smart and cunning badass; they tend to be my favourite characters if they ever crop up in stories, like Jim Taylor from Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart books or Hyacinthe from Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart.

I had a brief, torrid affair with the medieval romance of Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot in junior high (see Mists of Avalon above) although I was never one to idolise the chaste love affair of Guinevere and Lancelot. I found the relationship between Arthur and Guinevere far more interesting, as well as the relationship between Arthur and his best knight, but unfortunately few books ever retold that story to my satisfaction, even though I tore through quite a few Arthurian retellings. To this day, the only one I really like is T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which doesn’t really deal with the love affairs at all. I found many versions too simplistic in dealing with the fraught Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot triangle; she falls in love with Arthur, Arthur fucks up (usually by sleeping with Morgan le Fay), she promptly dumps him and carries on her affair with Lancelot. DULL. Also, I dislike how that portrayed each in an unflattering light, especially Arthur, who is after all England’s bestest king ever. For centuries monarchs only traced their lineage back to him by fudging ancestral records. Guinevere’s own infidelity is justified by Arthur’s and then poor widdle Lancelot is a thickheaded idiot caught in the middle. Far too easy. And dull.

In theory I really like love triangles but in execution I don’t. Or rather, I hate love triangles in which one person must decide between two choices, which annoys the fuck out of me. Just make your damn decision already. However, other permutations fascinate me: in which one or more “legs” are not heterosexual, in which one leg manipulates the other two, and in which all three parties care deeply about each other in varying ways. I’m more interested in seeing how the triangles are resolved satisfactorily than wondering who will end up with whom.

I have my books back! All my books, which are currently still stashed in boxes because they have no place to go! I think I’m going to reread the Alanna books by Tamora Pierce. Just because. I love them.