Quiet Portrayals of Minorities

We, along with many others, have said time and again how important it is for us to have marginalised people depicted. Erasure is extremely damaging, and tokenism is little better improvement.

Many authors and writers are catching on to that - either due to a genuine hope to make things better or because they’ve caught on that diversity may be a useful marketing ploy in some circles (yes, I tend to be that cynical - indeed anyone looking at the conquest of the Shondaverse should have realised there’s money in diversity).

One of the things that feeds my cynicism are the “Quiet Portrayals.”

“Quiet Portrayals” can come in many forms: the Blink-and-you-miss-it-bisexual, the ambiguously-olive-skin-tone, the absent POC ancestor, the careful avoidance of labels and identities, relying on vague descriptors or relying on brief one off mentions in long series.

Ultimately, they are portrayals of marginalised characters - but kept as low key as possible. It very closely resembles the idea of having to Google The Minorities, but while there you can only tell that a character is marginalised by looking for extra-textual clues and statements by the author (the infamous Word of Gay which renders Dumbledore gay, honest), in this case you have to carefully study every book and every episode and pick out the one or two references that indicate that a character is a minority. The information is in the book, it’s definitely there - it is just very brief and easily missed to people who aren’t taking careful notes.

The marginalised person is portrayed as marginalised in the book or on the show - but

but carefully masked, subtly presented to not be too overt or too present or too offputting for the privileged mainstream. That’s not saying that the writers here are expressly thinking in those terms - in many cases I would say certainly not. However the pressures of “maketability”, the societal default and our overwhelming sense of what a protagonist should look like, as well as the ongoing insistence that a book with marginalised characters must be entirely about marginalised issues make the Quiet Portrayal a very easy trap to fall into.

For marginalised readers this may be a portrayal of themselves - but it comes with a subtext: yes you can be in these stories so long as you are quiet. So long as you aren’t TOO Black/gay/Asian/trans. So long as you don’t “flaunt” or “stuff it down people’s throats.” Again, this may not be the intended message of the author - and they may even have more overt marginalised characters (but who are probably not more prominent, not as major a character or not the protagonist), but it does carry this message. The main characters, the protagonist can be marginalised so long as they are sufficiently “low key” while marginalised characters who cannot hide, cannot pass or whose marginalisation is not easily overlooked are pushed to supporting roles.

There are many ways this Quiet Portrayal can be achieved. One of them is to make references to the character’s marginalised nature to be brief and one off in a more overarching story. Take Sanctuary, Dr. Helen Magnus, who despite being a co-protagonist and appearing in 58 episodes over 4 seasons there is one, one single episode, where her bisexuality was referenced. If you missed that episode, you would think this series completely lacked LGBT characters, it certainly didn’t help that this belated revelation only crept onto the scene in the second-to-last episode of the show. Doctor Who also lept on that trope with River Song giving us a last minute spoiler that she is bisexual. Witches of East End lasted only two seasons - but it was two seasons full of overwhelming amounts of graphic sexuality and sexual relationships between opposite sex couples; except two episodes. Two episodes in which it was revealed Joanna is bisexual and has had a female lover who we briefly meet. Her bisexuality is not mentioned before this and never mentioned again - in a show that is wall-to-wall naked skin and humping.

Fury's Kiss (Dorina Basarab #3) by Karen Chance

While the war rages on and the American Vampire Senate looks to fill its empty seats, Dorina is still part of the squad looking to track down the smugglers using portals to arm the Dark Mages with deadly weaponry and creatures to tip the balance of the war

The investigation turns deadly when several vampire agents are destroyed leaving only Dorina as a survivor with a hole in her memory. To find out what happened, she will have to deal with vampires, fae, fallen angels – and more plots than she could ever have imagined.

But while all this is going on Dorina has another battle – with herself. Old barriers in her mind are coming down and everything she believed about her dhampire nature is being challenged – presenting new threats and new possibilities

There is a lot about this book I love

I love the development of what Dorina is, of the very nature of the dhampires and how this relates to vampire culture. The whole sense that vampires are deeply social and hierarchical and that Dorina’s vampire side feels all of that but is then isolated from the hierarchy by vampiric hatred of dhampires and her human side’s own weakness. It’s a wonderful little twist and manages to greatly expand what Dorina is without the sense of retconning or changing the established world setting at all. It also led to more excellent exploration of Dorina’s character and history as well as vampire culture. There’s also the ever-complicated relationship between Dorina and her father which is also wonderfully expanded on and explored in this book.

I also really liked Ray in this book. We had a lot more of his history as someone who is half-Portuguese and half-Indonesian and his history of being rather stuck between two cultures (including an interesting insight that previous Asian vampiric masters had used him, in centuries past, to be their guide to Europe but missing that European blood doesn’t give knowledge of language or custom). He really grew as a character in this book beyond his standard role as somewhat inept comic relief. He’s survivor and a chancer. A vampire who will never be a major power nor has any real close family ties to keep him safe - he’s always found his niche by being clever and being daring. He takes risks, he’s willing to try things no-one else would consider (sometimes for very good reason) he’s imaginative and creative and comes up with a lot of crafty answers and work arounds because of it. He becomes an asset and we can see him as an asset without having to greatly increase his power.

The plot itself is amazingly complicated (which I have some problems with which I will get to) which draws on every element of this vast world – and it is vast. I think every faction and player that has been introduced in the last two books all plays a hand in this book – the fae, the vampires, the mages and some new ones we’ve never heard of before. It all adds up to an incredibly complicated master plan which fits so well in this rich and wide world that is laid out for us

The pacing of the book is break neck (which, again, is not without its problems). Dorina runs from action to action, scene to scene at an incredible rate with no time to catch your breath before the next concept or battle or revelation lands on you. This doesn’t pause or get bogged down, though it can certainly exhaust you as you struggle to keep up with the battles or absorb yet another chunk of world building, all of it thrown at you with little chance to process.

The main problem I have with this book is that it feels long. It is somewhat long, that’s certainly true, but it’s the feeling of its length that is the problem. That sense as you’re reading that this book has already gone on for a very long time and isn’t it about time it started to get wrapped up?

Midnight's Daughter (Dorina Basarab #1) by Karen Chance

Dorina Basarab is worried about her room-mate, Claire. She’s missing and that’s not like her – worse, she is hearing some very disturbing rumours about what has happened to her. Not only is Claire a friend, but her powers are able to calm Dorina’s Dhampire rage.

Mircea, Dorina’s vampire father, has the resources to find Claire – but to use them he wants something in return; he wants Dorina to hunt down her escaped fugitive uncle. Vlad. Dracula. Who is every bit as terrifying as his legend would suggest.

Working with the reluctant and equally outcast Louis-Cesare, Dorina has to find and defeat a vampire who is legendary for his cunning and evil – but there’s a war raging between the supernaturals of North America and even the fae are involves with their own shady machinations.

We have a very rich world here – with so much going on and being involved in the plot. There’s Dorina and her family, the Basarabs. Yes, Dracula, but more than just a redrawing of Stoker, this is far more about the family from Wallachia. In fact, Dracula’s brothers, Mircea and Radu, play far more of a role in this book than Vlad himself. There’s a lot of complex and involved family dynamics there that are really interesting to explore.

On top of the vampires and dhampires we have fae of several stripes, light and dark, different courts, different factions, different creatures, royal politics and all kinds of shenanigans.

Then there’s a war on between several of the factions that affects Dory, including the Vampire Senate. Even though Dorina doesn’t directly involve herself with the war, the fact it takes resources and creates new factions to be wary of is a constant background to the story – it’s pervasive and even when it’s not overwhelming it’s always there. We never have to really see the war to feel the scale of it and its effect on their society. It all comes together to be a really well written, rich world I enjoy.

Dorina and her side-kick/fairly obvious love interest Louis-Cesare are moderately decent characters. I find them both extremely typical of the genre. Dorina is the kick-ass Urban Fantasy female protagonist, she has woo-woo that is rare, she’s a dangerous fighter but there are definitely darker and more dangerous things out there. She has anger issues, a whole lot of anger issues. Louis-Cesare is a super sexy French vampire who has arrogance issues and a tragic, tortured past. They’re not bad characters, but they’re genre templates, we’ve seen them before and we will certainly see them again. There’s a lot of them raging at each other that gets in the way of the plot, but the inevitable sexual tension doesn’t – both are pretty focused on the mission and most of their conflict comes from them struggling over who is in charge. They do stay on mission –but have drastically different ideas over how to do that