Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

We've watched more Psycho-pass and From the New World, and these two shows have a lot more in common than you'd think from reading the descriptions I wrote last time.

In Psycho-pass, the Sibyl System (a computer) is judge, jury, and executioner if people's psychological profiles get too cloudy. People who could maybe exhibit criminal tendencies in the future are summarily executed (or thrown into jail, if their number isn't too high). Latent criminals, they're called.

In the New World, where all people have telekinetic powers, the Board of Ethics quietly eliminates all the people who might become Fiends or Karma Demons. (Fiends are basically sociopathic monsters; karma demons are people whose powers escape subconsciously and mutate the world around them.) They give kids all these psychological tests to see if they've got latent criminal tendencies.

What does it say about society today that two shows, by two different studios, are discussing the same essential theme?

To borrow an internet phrase, ORLY?

OK, as a matter of de gustibus, as the saying goes, non disputandum est. You don't like, you don't read, but don't disparage other folks' pleasure reading.

Yesterday, John Scalzi posted as his Big Idea du jour Malinda Lo's Ash, a retelling of Cinderella, where Cinderella's a lesbian. And no one in the story cares. Because queer folks need fairy tales, too, wherein there's no one yelling hate at them or forcing them into loveless marriages, and they all live happily ever after.

Some people take issue with this, saying that it's uninteresting to have a world without homophobia. Others say it's forcing heteronormativity onto a lesbian. The comment thread is pretty interesting.

So the first, as mentioned above, is a matter of taste. The second... I'm not sure. When you say a lesbian must XYZ or else it's heteronormative, that's stereotyping. Lesbians must be oppressed or you're heteronorming them.

Really? We can't posit that, say, 100 years in the future the desert patriarchal religions and their followers, as well as most major cultures, get their heads out of their asses and say "hey, love is love, and it doesn't matter which bits you have"? Of course, as we learned with the civil rights movement in the 60s, you can't legislate away hate, but you can encourage society along a more friendly path. So 200 years in the future, it's plausible that 95% or more of people just plain don't give a shit who other people sleep with.

Why is that a bad thing?

Why is it a bad thing to posit a fantasy world where nobody gives a crap about who's fucking whom? If we assume that most homophobia in the real world stems from the desert patriarchal religions (which led to the development of patriarchal societies), why would a fantasy world, which doesn't have that religion, necessarily have homophobia?

Someone over on Scalzi's blog said (paraphrase) that they were tired of all stories about GLBT characters being coming out stories or stories about dealing with oppression. They wanted to read about something that *isn't* what they deal with every goddamn day. What's so wrong about that?

And, as I said above, as a matter of taste, if a story about GLBT characters not dealing with oppression doesn't appeal to you, fine. Don't read it. But don't tell the rest of us that we're wrong to want that sort of thing.

Don't we want society to view being queer as normal? As a non-issue? Isn't that the goal of increasing visibility and awareness? So I'm seriously befuddled as to why positing a society that considers sexuality a complete non-issue is a bad thing.

I'm positing in my space future a world that doesn't give a shit whom you sleep with, at least in most of it. And now I've spent a good 45 minutes writing this when I should have been writing that, so back to it.

Research. There are too many interruptions to get any writing done, but I can look shit up on the internet.

I've been trying to figure out a story about the ghost stations in Berlin, and I think I have. It's about a Turkish girl, whose father brought her & her mother & her siblings there in 198570 after he saved enough money. She can see ghosts. It's also a story about the history of public transit, the U-bahn and S-bahn, and DB, in Berlin. I think it has a plot, even.

With this story, I'm trying something new and exciting: having a story arc mapped out before I sit down to write. I know, crazy. Everything I've written so far, fanfic, the draft of Nothing Beside, "A Game of Empire," has been written starting with an idea. I've been meaning to meta on my writing habits, so be warned. ( Here's some meta. )