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Fantasy lit that passes the Bechdel test?


white wolfpack

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Hah well, this topic got derailed quickly.

To the OP: If you are interested in novels with a female or even feminist perspective, then citing "Outlander" as a good example of what you are looking for is potentially very troublesome since it promotes non-consensual sex, normally known as "rape". Unfortunately.

As for recommendations, Bujold's "Paladin of Souls" is excellent, passes the Bechdel test and has a female protagonist, plus interesting female minor characters. Her "Curse of Chalion" in the same universe is also amazing, but due to having a male protagonist, I am unsure if it passes the Bechdel test specifically. It does however deal with issues of female primogeniture, of women trying to grasp their own destiny, and the male lead is very non-traditional and overall doesn't fit the mold of how fantasy heroes are normally portrayed. In general, a lot of Bujold's male heroes are emasculated in some ways or other, including Lupe in "Curse".

8 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ahem. OK.

A would recommend The Dagger and The Coin by our esteemed Mr. Abraham.

Yes, Abraham is always very good.

Despite the Long Price Quartet having mostly male protagonists, it manages to have something as unusual as a female anti-hero who doesn't get to be punished by death. That alone is astonishing.

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+1 Curse of Chalion (regardless of tests). I have yet to read the sequel/prequel?

Vance's "Lyonesse" has too much rape (and rape threats, both treated in a sometimes disturbingly "ribald" fashion, e.g. most male (villains) are permanently super-horny, often leading to downfall although this fits with the general dark fairy tale tone) and the main female character suffers a tragic fate, but she is nevertheless a strong and interesting character and so are some supporting females, including a sorceress. [Technically, the test is probably passed because there are several scenes with a princess and governesses talking and one with a girl and an elderly woman planning to outwit an evil witch.]

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2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

+1 Curse of Chalion (regardless of tests). I have yet to read the sequel/prequel?

Vance's "Lyonesse" has too much rape (and rape threats, both treated in a sometimes disturbingly "ribald" fashion, e.g. most male (villains) are permanently super-horny, often leading to downfall although this fits with the general dark fairy tale tone) and the main female character suffers a tragic fate, but she is nevertheless a strong and interesting character and so are some supporting females, including a sorceress. [Technically, the test is probably passed because there are several scenes with a princess and governesses talking and one with a girl and an elderly woman planning to outwit an evil witch.]

Vance's books are very male-oriented.  But yes, IIRC the Lyonnesse trilogy does pass Bechdel Test (for whatever the test is worth).  Indeed it is somewhat disappointing, in that there is a more-than-usual focus on female characters, and the reader starts to invest in them, but this rarely leads to any satisfying resolution. 

There are probably not many of Vance's works that would pass the test.

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13 hours ago, Leap said:

Regarding Wheel of Time, I do not credit it with genuinely passing the Bechdel test as there are only so many times you can bring together a limited number of words and not get something good at least one of those times. Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson are certainly pseudonyms for the Infinite Monkey.

The test is what it is.  However, it was originally applied to movies, which are typically pretty short by word-count standards, even counting only converstations.  Perhaps the test would best be applied to individual volumes, not to a series as a whole.

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Outlander bad. Bad Outlander.

Ha. What lyanna said.

 

Hah well, this topic got derailed quickly.

To the OP: If you are interested in novels with a female or even feminist perspective, then citing "Outlander" as a good example of what you are looking for is potentially very troublesome since it promotes non-consensual sex, normally known as "rape". Unfortunately.

 

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29 minutes ago, Puntificator said:

Esmenet becomes an empress despite her background. It takes a powerful woman to do that in the oppressive (to females) world Bakker is writing about.

<snip>

ugh, no she becomes empress because of her husband. She suited Kelhus's purposes. But he could easily have picked anyone else.

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6 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

ugh, no she becomes empress because of her husband. She suited Kelhus's purposes. But he could easily have picked anyone else.

I don't think so, but I'm not going to get into a deeper discussion about the book, since that belongs in another topic. What is on-topic is the fact that the book in question passes the Bechdel test. 

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I'm not 100% sure if Daniel Abraham's books pass the Bechdel, though I'm pretty sure they do, but you should read them anyway because they're awesome and have some extremely good female characters. Clara Kalliam is one of my favourite characters ever.


Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor passes the test, and is in large part, among the other themes, about women's independence in a man's world. Who Fears Death does too, pretty sure, though that's an 'approach with caution' because although the book is amazing, it very deliberately goes into a great many things about violence against women, so although the women are good, well-written characters, they're often treated very badly (in a lot of ways, it's an explicit discussion of exactly the sort of real-life issue that Bakker is depicting apparently mostly blindly).

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I really appreciate those who made sincere recommendations here.  I think I've successfully managed to glean a list to check out and if any snark accidentally made it in I assume I'll figure that out when I check out the Amazon reviews. 
Sorry about The long price quartet, but I tried really, really hard to like it and just could not go on after about 100 pages.  I wanted to like it, but I don't think I can bring myself to try Daniel Abraham again. 

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Outlander... where to start! 

Initially I quite liked it, the first book anyway. I found Claire refreshingly straightforward, composed and strong. I was fine with the time travelling mechanics etc., and found her attraction to Jamie intriguing. I even excused the first instance of rape, considering the period, the fact that she was alone, dressed oddly and so on... I thought the author used rape to set up Black Jack as the firm villain (which is quite lazy, but I was more forgiving back then?) and to illustrate the danger of Claire's predicament, being stuck across time and all. 

But proceeding to the second book, then the third, this became problematic. Then it became grating and then downright infuriating. IIRC,

 

Spoiler

Claire gets raped, so does her daughter and a friend and literally everyone else. Oh, and Jamie. While I found the idea of male rape potentially interesting to explore, it quickly morphed into a kind of hurt/comfort FF type scene (I am not denigrating FF; far from it. But this ain't that). 

Then Lord John's love for Jaime... again, struck me as verra(!) fanficcy, to the tune of 'my man's so hot, no one can resist him!'. It drove home the Mary Sue/Gary Stu vibe of the entire series, really.

And overall too, the prose was dense and rambling, far too detailed and after a while, very hard to absorb and get into, for me. So I abandoned the books eventually. 

I do have to say I enjoyed S1 of the show, though. I think the actors (especially the female lead and BlackJack/other hubby) are a key reason why. 

 

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