I didn’t want a photo of the US Election so some turkeys from my neighborhood say hello
From my November 2024 Newsletter:
There’s been a thing on social media after the 2024 US election where apparently some readers are telling authors that they “don’t want politics in fantasy.” Isn’t fantasy all about escapism, getting away from the world’s nastiness?
My take on this is that fantasy is, as we like to say in academia, always already political. It might be the most intrinsically political genre out there. Fantasy deals with questions of what constitutes evil, how do we fight it, what’s legitimate violence and legitimate authority, what does ethical resistance look like, how is a society ordered in ways that strengthens or oppresses people…all of these are profoundly political questions.
Fantasy with romance? Even more so. Because now you’re telling a story framed with how a society orders and permits (or doesn’t) intimate partner relationships, gender definitions, marriage, child-rearing, all of it. As a queer writer, to create a queernorm world is political – and it’s also political to work in a world where queerness is dangerous.
In fantasy, all of the structures of power and relationship that we take for granted in our own society become a deliberately chosen story frame. The story might invite us to question our reality – this is the fantasy that might feel more overtly “political.” Or, again as we say in academia, a story might “reify” our social reality – making a given understanding of life more invisible and unquestionable, assuming it as a natural order of things rather than something that’s been created by custom and legal decisions.
But both kinds of fantasy are political. A fantasy that doesn’t explicitly raise questions about power, governance, equity, or justice, still says something about power, the world, and how it is and should be organized. Implicitly saying that we don’t have to think about the structures of power is very much a political stance.
In my own published works so far, I’ve spent a lot of time with power as something that’s given up, or shared, or built together through love, or the damage done by power that’s gained through the suffering or exploitation of others. These questions are very much on my mind now. I hope that wherever you are, you’re finding stories that move you, and that these stories are ones that help you build power, value community, and see the world as large and worthy of being loved.