very odd fanmail
Jul. 13th, 2008 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahjrossLike many authors, I get mail from readers from time to time; they reach me through a link on my website. And probably like every author who has written in a shared world or as a junior author in someone else's universe, I get complaints. Usually, these involve my departure from the reader's conception of a character, or else that they simply didn't like some aspect of the story. Those are fine; you can't please them all.
This one is new for me, however. The reader refers to The Alton Gift (in which one of the viewpoint characters is Danilo Syrtis, grieving the death of Regis Hastur in the previous book, which I did not write):
"The characters ... have been twisted - for example, into blatent [sic] homosexuality that fits badly with both the Darkovian culture and the characters, and had barely been hinted at before, if that."
I am quite baffled as to how anyone could read The Heritage of Hastur or Sharra's Exile and not have understood that Regis and Danilo are lifelong lovers. Heritage came out in 1975, when it was daring to portray a sympathetic and heroic gay protagonist, but Marion did it quite deliberately -- both Marion and Betsy Wollheim, our editor, told me so. It is so odd to be accused of "twisting" Darkover into what Marion intended in the first place, especially on an issue that was so important to her -- and to so many of her readers.
Of course, my first impulse is to respond, informing the reader how just plain wrong this is. But I think it better to simply let it go, as the omens are not auspicious for a meeting of minds, and so I have vented my befuddlement here.
This one is new for me, however. The reader refers to The Alton Gift (in which one of the viewpoint characters is Danilo Syrtis, grieving the death of Regis Hastur in the previous book, which I did not write):
"The characters ... have been twisted - for example, into blatent [sic] homosexuality that fits badly with both the Darkovian culture and the characters, and had barely been hinted at before, if that."
I am quite baffled as to how anyone could read The Heritage of Hastur or Sharra's Exile and not have understood that Regis and Danilo are lifelong lovers. Heritage came out in 1975, when it was daring to portray a sympathetic and heroic gay protagonist, but Marion did it quite deliberately -- both Marion and Betsy Wollheim, our editor, told me so. It is so odd to be accused of "twisting" Darkover into what Marion intended in the first place, especially on an issue that was so important to her -- and to so many of her readers.
Of course, my first impulse is to respond, informing the reader how just plain wrong this is. But I think it better to simply let it go, as the omens are not auspicious for a meeting of minds, and so I have vented my befuddlement here.
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Date: 2008-07-14 04:39 pm (UTC)boggling, indeed. But the response has been wonderful and I'm at the giggling stage. Giggling means breathing, which is Good.